More 1975-01: Vol 5 Iss 1

Richard Schickel: Bring Back Cary Grant

by
Nicholas
von Hojiman

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TV's Weekend News, ae

Or ‘I Love A Parade’ .
Radio’s King of Insults

Irving Kristol On
Adversary Journalism

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JANUARY 1975

CONTENTS

Rocky In Medialand

by Nichotas von Hoffman
Time and Newsweek have provided their 40 million readers with
lots of coverage of Nelson Rockefeller since his vice presidential
nomination last August. We now know, for example, that he sips
Dubonnet and dandies his children on his knee.

Page 5

Take That, You Lonely People!
By Deanne Stillman

They do take it, and come back for more—which explains why
WMCA's Bob Grant is New York radio’s King of Insults.

Page 9

“Hello Hollywood, Get Me Rewrite!”
by Richard Schickel

Billy Wilder's new film version of “The Front Page,” starring Jack
Lemmon as Hildy Johnson and Walter Matthau as Walter Burns,
only makes our critic wistful for Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.

Page 13

Pride and Prejudice
By Thomas Powers
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter explores the sudden surge of
union activity in the book publishing industry and finds book-
people eager for blue collar benefits but more than a little
reluctant to wear the blue collar itself.

Page 17

‘| Love a Parade’
by Richard Wexler

Page 20

oa

i
/..... AND WHATS \
( YOUR FAVORITE |

MONSTER? /

And not only parades. The weekend TV news in New York is
awash in dart championships, monster contests, marathons,
block parties and art show. Our reporter surfaces after a nine-
week trivia-watch and explains why.

Hellbox Page 3
The WIN campaign falters . . . New plans for Richard Goodwin
and Nicholas Johnson...Which airline has the
orgy? . . . Rosebuds to the Texas Observer

The Big Apple Page 24
At the Times: biacks file suit, General Brown pays a

visit. . . Happy Talk football. ..in the news: Nora Ephron,
Marion Brando, Bill Beutel and Bozo... The Great New York
Media Conspiracy?

Furthermore
by Irving Kristol
A conservative intellectual touches on the history of adversary
journalism in the U.S. and suggests that today’s reporters don’t
really understand it or its current impact.

Back Page

Cover drawing by Sandy Huffaker

Richard Pollak
Editor

Claudia Cohen

[MORE] Volume 5. Number 1 is
published monthly by Rosebud
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[MORE]

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All editorial, advertising and
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[MORE]

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Associate Publisher
Copyright © 1974 by Rose-

Kathy Jones _ bud Associates, inc., 750 Third
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9 Telephone. (212) 867-9797

Rhoda M. Ribner
Managing Editor
J. Anthony Lukas
Senior Editor

Brit Hume
Washington Editor

Special Projects Washington office: 1910 N
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785-0102 Nothing in this publi-
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and at additional mailing offices

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Business Manager

Malcolm Frouman
Art Director

Contributing Editors: David Halberstam, Judith
Adier Hennessee, Bob Kuttner, Kari E. Meyer,
Marty Norman, Terry Pristin, Joseph Roddy,
David M. Rubin, Peter Schrag, Richard Schickel.

2 [MORE]

VEIMERS

The Junta

Regarding your Hellbox item “The Junta
That Refreshes’”’ [November 1974], are you
saying that no foreign government with whose
policies and politics you disagree should be
allowed to hire a public relations firm? The
question is serious and deserves more than
the snide, superficial treatment you gave it.
—Stephen S. Rosenfeld
Washington, D.C.
*

The piece by Beekman Winthrop—‘The
Junta That Refreshes’’—interested me very
much because it calis attention to the
advertising-public relations agencies as
advisers in politics and to big business. |
think the first person to call attention to this
development in American journalism as a
greater menace than the power of advertising
itself was William Allen White, and I am
enclosing his statement on the subject which

you might care to use....
—George Seldes
Windsor, Vt.

made in an address to
Wharton School in 1938,

White's remarks,
students at the
follow:

... The new menace to the freedom of the
press, a menace in this country vastly more
acute than the menace from government,
may come through the pressure not through
one group of advertisers, but of a whole sector
of newspaper advertisers. Newspaper
advertising is now placed somewhat if not
largely, through nationwide advertising
agencies. Some of these agencies have lately
become advisers of great industrial
corporations, which also advertise. These
advertising agencies undertake to protect
their clients from what the clients and agents
may regard as real dangers from inimical
social, political, or industrial influences. As
advisers advertising agencies may exercise
unbelievably powerful pressure upon
newspapers. There is grave danger that in the
coming decade, as social, industrial and
economic problems become more and more
acute, this capacity for organized control of
newspaper opinions through the political
advisers or national advisers who in turn are
paid to control public opinion, may constitute
a new threat to the freedom of the press... .

The problem of the American newspaper
today is to open its channels to new social
ideals and to insure fair treatment for any
reformer who is obviously honest, reasonably
intelligent and backed by any considerable
minority of the public....

But I suppose in the end newspapers
cannot be free, absolutely free in the highest
and best sense, until the whole social and
economic structure of American life is open
to-the free interplay of democratic processes.

That Junket (cont’d.)

Periodic volcanic eruptions from Mount
Manning in Boston have become part of
America’s journalistic landscape—and I
suppose we should all learn to ignore them.
But when Manning’s pronuncimentos are not
only pompous but innacurate [Letters—

December 1974] I feel moved to respond. |
never misrepresented myself as working for
the Atlantic Monthly. That was done by a
“publicity person” from Simon & Schuster. It
had neither my blessing nor my cooperation.
Indeed, when I heard about it I voiced
disbelief and annoyance. So far as I can tell,
the S & S misrepresentation was made solely
to the author—Cornelius Ryan—to assure
him that I deserved a place on the trip. On
the junket itself, the badge issued to me said
“JA. Lukas, [MORE] Magazine.”’ When we
discussed such matters, I told everybody that
I represented [MORE] and only [MORE]. The
only time I ever mentioned the Aflantic
episode was in my article (‘I Got the Prince
in the Morning and the Queen at Night,”—
November 1974).
—J. Anthony Lukas
Senior Editor
[MORE]
New York, N.Y.

No Speaker

As areporter for a newspaper you labeled one
of the “ten worst,’ [May 1974], I almost
hesitate to correct you. But I don’t want any
of your readers to be surprised when they find
out the Harold E. Ford, included in your list
of the “Unholy 88°" [November 1974] that
didn’t make Time's 200, to be black. After
all, you said he was the Democratic majority
leader of the Tennessee House of
Representatives.

If that were true, not only would Ford be
entitled to be on Time's list, he would rank as
a miracle man. A black Democratic majority
leader in a southern state?

The Democratic Speaker of the Tennessee
House of Representatives is Ned Ray Mc-
Wherter. He’s 44, white and a likely op-
ponent for Sen. Bill Brock (R) in 1976. Ford
may earn his spot on the 200 in Congress. He
just defeated the white Republican in-
cumbent, Day Kuykendall, in Tennessee’s
8th District.

A question: Was the mistake Time's as
well as [MORE]'s?

—James W. Brosnan
The Commercial Appeal,

Memphis Tenn.
P.S. One Tennessean who made the final 200,
Lamar Alexander, was swamped by

Democrat Ray Blanton in the Governor's
race. Alexander included the 200 listing in his
campaign literature, apparently without
much effect.

Editor's reply: The error was all ours. Harold
Ford was a Memphis member of the Ten-
nessee house, but never its speaker.

Corrections

Beginning this month, corrections will
appear in the Letters column instead of
in the Hellbox as before. To mark this
change, we swallow hard and report that
in last month’s issue the caption on the
Evans and Novak picture (page 11) was
reversed. Novak was on the left, Evans on
the right.

Losing the
WIN Campaign

Under the direction of the
Advertising Council, Benton &
Bowles spent a feverish weekend last
fall devising the WIN slogan,
buttons and stickers for President
Ford’s anti-inflation drive. There
was talk of following that effort with
a full-scale ‘public service’’ media
blitz, but today the WIN campaign
has faltered and the council is under
political attack.

Thirty Congressional Democrats,
led by Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal of
New York, contend that the council
has been propagandizing for a highly
partisan political viewpoint. Since
the council, as a _ tax-exempt
organization, is supposed to avoid
taking sides on such issues, says
Rosenthai, the Democrats may file a
complaint with the IRS challenging
the tax exemption. The council,
however, says the campaign is
strictly nonpartisan. ‘Fighting
inflation is a national problem,” says
Dean Fritchen, vice-president for

media.
The Democrats also say that if the

television networks carry WIN
commercials, they will demand free
equal time to reply under the
provisions of the fairness doctrine.
But at present, no TV spots are even

in the works. The Citizens Action
Committee to Fight Inflation,
formed by Ford to spearhead a
nonpartisan drive, has been unable
to raise the $150,000 which Robert
Keim, a committee member and
president of the council, estimates
the council would require to mount a
major TV and print campaign. There
is also some doubt as to the White
House’s current interest in pursuing
an ad drive, which focuses on the
inflation issue while ignoring other
economic factors. With political and
financial complications, and no
official go-ahead, the Ad Council's
WIN campaign will probably not
progress beyond the button stage.

—PHYLLIS SHEERR

Rolling Along
With Goodwin

After six months as editor of Rolling

Stone’s new “‘politics’’ section,
former Kennedy _ speechwriter
Richard Goodwin no_ longer

supervises the magazine’s political
coverage. As a contributor, feature
writer and “consultant,” he still
receives a regular paycheck—but
Stone editor Jann Wenner says he
“would hate to discuss the amount.”
For Stone’s new political editor in
Washington, Wenner is_ seeking
someone who is young and not as

HENBOM

Wide World

Richard Goodwin

“heavy” as such writers as Hunter
Thompson or Tim Crouse—or
Richard Goodwin. “I find it
impossible to turn writers into
editors,” says Wenner.

Goodwin was reportedly upset by
Wenner’s decision not to turn the
political section into a separate
magazine, as had been considered.
The section is now a permanent
Stone feature, and Wenner says he
made the decision only after—and
indeed because—Goodwin said he
wasn’t interested in editing it. The
two men had a letter of
understanding that Goodwin would
spend six months setting up the
political section, and with that

Unfasten Seat Belts, Prepare for Orgy

Since the creation of a new
advertising campaign, business has
picked up for Southern Airways, one
of the nation’s smallest local
carriers. Its television commercials—
with scripts titled “Orgy,” “Party,”’
and “Bum’’—have brought the
delighted Atlanta-based airline the
most attention it has ever enjoyed.
But a New Orleans watchdog group
called Truth in Advertising says the
commercials represent deceptive and
fraudulent advertising, and has filed
complaints against Southern with
the FTC, the FCC and the Civil
Aeronautics Board.

In Southern’s 30-and 60-second
commercials, a!l of them similar, a
traveler boards a competing airline
and discovers an orgy in progress in
the first-class compartment. The
stewardesses wear flimsy Roman
tunics, champagne corks pop in the
background, and lobster is the plat
du jour. A disdainful stewardess
points the traveler to his seat in the
coach section. “How do you feel
when you have to take that long walk
past those guys who are flying first
class and you aren’t?”’ asks a male
overvoice. The answer: ‘‘You feel
like a bum.”’ In a somewhat different
commercial we learn that ‘what the
stewardess really means’’ when she
orders you back to the second cabin

is ‘“‘Get back there with the
peasants.” In coach, the script
provides for passengers who “all
look like inmates in a _ Nazi
concentration camp or Jewish
immigrants.” There are no seats.
Passengers huddle on the floor and
sip from bowls of gruel. Live
chickens run loose in the aisles. But
on Southern Airways, we are told, all
passengers get good service because
there is only one class—“‘and it isn't
second.”

Based on the fares charged, Truth
in Advertising says, ‘‘all seats on
Southern are in fact second class.”
The complaint further contends that
all competing airlines offer
essentially similar services and
provide them on an equal basis

according to the fares paid.
Southern’s attorney in the CAB
proceeding, Cecil Beasley, says
however, that what Southern calls its
standard class offers better service
and food than other airlines’ tourist

or second-class sections. As _ for
whether Southern’s depiction of its
competitors’ attitudes is inaccurate,
Beasley says the commercials were
done ‘“‘in a manner so exaggerated
that no one with any reason would
accept it as such.”

Truth in Advertising hopes to
obtain a cease-and-desist order.
While the complaints plow through
the Federal bureaucracy, the
commercials continue, and
stewardesses ply the male passengers
with grapes. —CLAUDIA COHEN

period ended, Goodwin says, he
prefers to return to writing.

An article by Goodwin in the Nov.
25 New Yorker assesses the impact
of the fall elections, concluding they
were “pretty much a standoff.” The
article attracted the attention of
columnist Clayton Fritchey, who
discussed it in his Nov. 26 column in
the New York Post.
“Unfortunately,”’ wrote Fritchey, “‘it
gives us not (Goodwin's) own
conclusions but those of a ‘man
interviewed’ by Goodwin) whose
advice has been sought by a whole
generation of Democratic office-
seekers.’ ’’ But Fritchey despaired
needlessly, because Goodwin says
the article was ‘“‘purely an interview
with me and _ myself.”’ Neither
Goodwin, nor his editor at The New
Yorker had anticipated any such
confusion. But after seeing the
article in print, Goodwin says, he
decided that perhaps he should have
added the word ‘‘fictional.”’

—DAVID ZUKERMAN

Robert’s Rules

As clerk of the U.S. House of
Representatives, Ralph Roberts first
attracted national attention when he
used a chauffeur-driven government
Cadillac for a vacation in 1959, and
for later trips to the racetrack. He
was ousted from the job in 1967 after
refusing to provide congressional
investigators with information about
the late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell’s
financial affairs. Now Roberts has
reemerged as the central figure in a
bizarre First Amendment case in
Indiana. Roberts was_ the
Democratic nominee for county
prosecutor last November in Spencer
County (pop. 16,000). He lost the
election by 210 votes—the only
Democrat on the ticket to lose—after
the weekly Rockport Journal (circ:
3,834) raised questions about the
propriety of his campaign.

One point bothering the Journal
was that, if elected, Roberts, 77,
would have been prosecuting cases
before his brother, Circuit Court
Judge John L. Roberts. Another
troublesome issue arose when Judge
Roberts sent campaign letters on his
brother’s behalf to voters—using
judicial stationery and stamps paid
for by the taxpayers. When the
Journal criticized the mailing last
fall, Judge Roberts cited its editor,
Jerry Hargis, for contempt. The
citation, unlike most such orders,
did not refer to any matter pending
before the court.

After issuing the citation, Judge
Roberts gave several local interviews
and he called Hargis ‘‘a crackpot
editor running a scandal sheet.’’ For
all his bias, Judge Roberts has
requested that the Indiana Supreme

[MORE] 3

Court appoint a_ special judge,
Robert Skinner of Bedford, who will
begin hearing evidence in the case
Jan. 27.

—MICHAEL DORMAN

Making
Airwaves

Nicholas Johnson, the outspoken
former FCC Commissioner, is about
to begin a new venture: watching
television. Sometime in January,
Johnson will assume full-time
command of the seven-year-old
National Citizens Committee for
Broadcasting, originally formed to
lobby for the creation of a public
broadcasting network. The new
NCCB will keep a close eye on the
FCC, gather information for local
media reform groups seeking greater
public access to the hundreds of U.S.
commercial television stations, and
publicize procedures open to the
public for challenging objectionable
programming. Neither NCCB nor its
new magazine, access, will advocate
positions on particular broadcasting
issues, according to Chuck
Shepherd, the group’s executive

Nicholas Johnson

secretary and editor of access.

Shepherd is the first to admit that
NCCB and media reform both have a
long way to go. He estimates that
there are only about 60 full-time
media activist groups now in
existence in the country. And the
reformers must contend with both a
powerful and rich industry and a
Federal Communications Com-
mission which do not particularly
welcome greater outside par-
ticipation in their work.

As for the NCCB itself, the group
hopes to raise $100,000 in 1975 to
continue its activities. About $70,000
of the total will have to come from
foundations, an area Johnson will
tend to when he returns to
Washington from his native lowa,
where he was an_ unsuccessful
candidate in the Democratic primary
for the House of Representatives.

4 [MORE]

HEU

Johnson will also serve as publisher
of access and continue his speaking
engagements around the country.
And, of course, his position at NCCB
will help the broadcasting maverick
retain a high visibility in Washington
and elsewhere. mn. <,

Canadian nationalism may soon
force the shutdown of that country’s
only weekly newsmagazine, the
Canadian edition of Time.
Currently, Canadian advertisers may
not take tax deductions for ad-
vertising in Canadian editions of
foreign periodicals—except for Time
and Reader's Digest, which between
them control two-thirds of all
Canadian magazine advertising
revenue. Proposed legislation would
cancel at least Time’s exemption and
create prohibitive costs for
advertisers.

Previous attempts to exert
Canadian control failed to reckon
with the political influence of Time
co-founder Henry Luce. In 1957, a
20 per cent tax that was imposed on
advertising in Time and the Digest
was cancelled following intervention
by President Eisenhower. When, in
1964, legislation was proposed to
make all advertising in foreign-
owned periodicals not tax-deduct-
ible, the U.S. State Department
threatened to withdraw from major
trade agreements. As a result, the
legislation was passed with a rider
exempting Time and the Digest.

Despite evidence that Canadian
advertisers would not deflect their
advertising dollars to magazines
lacking the mass base of Time (circ:
approx. 560,000), Sen. Keith Davey’s
Special Committee on the Mass
Media recommended in 1969 that
the exemption be ended, describing
it as “a choice between logic and
love.” No action was then taken; but
Davey, as the architect of the Liberal
victory in last July’s elections, now
has the political leverage to force the
issue.

The probability is that the
Canadian Digest, whose ownership is
already 35 per cent Canadian, will
avoid the tax measure by becoming
Canadian-owned. Time Canada is
presently negotiating to sell up to a
75 per cent interest to Canadian
newspaper chains. Time's eight
pages of Canadian politics, regional
events and the arts may provide a
service not otherwise available, but it
appears that nationalist sentiment
will prevail in new tax legislation. In
that event, says Stephen S. La Rue,
president of Time Canada, “we
would deeply regret being unable to
continue.”

—ROBERT F. McNEIL

Lone Star

= to the Texas Observer, the muckraking, positive-
thinking bi-weekly, for surviving twenty years in.a state where the Bill
of Rights is sometimes considered a subversive document. Observer
editors recently celebrated the milestone by publishing a 64-page slick-
covered 20th Anniversary Edition. As usual, the issue barely paid for
itself.

Officially ignored and unofficially loathed by the state’s brotherhood
of conservative dailies, the Observer (circ: 12,000) has nevertheless
forced its well-heeled competitors to take a closer look at political
corruption and power-broker collusion in the Lone Star State. A fairly
recent example was the Sharpstown Bank scandal, which probably
would have been swept under a thick carpet had not the Observer kept
on the story. The scandal eventually involved former Gov. Preston
Smith, former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes (previously regarded as the new LBJ
of both Texas and Democratic Party politics), the speaker of the Texas
House, a former attorney general and some powerful financiers.

The University of Texas OBSERVER

Board of Regents has
consistently been embarrassed
by such Observer revelations as
the $1 million appropriated for
a new chancellor's mansion.
While the regents were
building the mansion and
enlarging the football field, the
Observer reported, they were
also raising tuition and cutting
teachers’ salaries and research
funds.

Over the years the Observer
has attracted the state’s best
writers: in some cases, it has
discovered them. “The one great thing about the Observer, aside from
the fact it has always been a fine piece of journalism,” says Willie
Morris, a former Observer editor who moved on to edit Harpers, “‘is it
has given young people interested in and driven by writing a place to
develop. There is practically no other journal that allows that.”

Observer reporters regularly cover the state legislature, and have
examined the way lobbyists operate in Austin and the practice of giving
gifts to state officials. In other stories, the Observer has probed the
Texas Railroad Commission, conditions in the state’s reform schools
and mental hospitals, and maneuvers of local boy Billy Sol Estes.

The Observer was born in December, 1954, when a group of liberal
Democrats got together and decided they needed a voice to counter the
state’s conservative dailies. They asked Ronnie Dugger, a young liberal
journalist, to edit the publication. “I told them essentially I would do it
only if it was not a party organ,’’ Dugger told the UPI recently. ‘‘I
would strike a deal if they would agree that I would have exclusive
control of the editorial content. The publisher would have the right to
fire me, but no other rights. It’s that way today.”

Today the Observer is run by Kaye Northcott, a live-wire journalist,
co-editor Molly Ivins and associate editor John. Ferguson. “When I
went to work here in 1968 we did have a little bit of a savings account,”
editor Northcott recalls. ‘But we went to Scholtz’ Beer Garden to
celebrate my arrival and cleaned out the last of it with two pitchers of
beer. It’s been nip and tuck, but we’ve always made it. Last year’s profit
was $158, and that was one of our big years.”

While championing moral responsibility, the Observer has on
occasion choked on its own words. Willie Morris recalls a time when he
and Dugger visited Mrs. Frankie Randolph, the original publisher, at
her home in Camden, a small, depressed sawmill town in East Texas.
“Mrs. Randolph, the Eleanor Roosevelt of Texas, owned the whole
county,” Morris says. ‘‘We sat on the back porch drinking gin and
tonic and watching an inter-racial softball game between her grand-
children and the blacks. You couldn’t help thinking about the blood
and guilt money that was supporting the Observer. On our way back to
Austin, I finally broke the silence and said, ‘Dugger, do you suppose
that little ol’ whipped-down town back there has been subsidizing the
liberalism of the Observer all these years?”

“I’m afraid so,” Dugger admitted.

THE TEXAS

Rocky in Medialand

BY NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN

The pattern of his activities indicates that it is the
objective of the Rockefellers to place Nelson
Rockefeller in the White House by some means,
whether direct, indirect or cataclysmic. Direct
election as President is now possible with the sham
‘philanthropic,’ ‘benevolent’ and ‘public-spirited’
build-up he has had; but it is improbable. More
probable would be his nomination as Vice-
Presidential candidate on one of their ‘bi-partisan’
or ‘omni-partisan’ tickets at the side of a
Presidential candidate whom they know to be
tottering at the edge of the grave, or who could be
disposed of by some other of the methods of
purging that have become so commonplace during
the New and Fair Deals.

From Rockefeller *‘Internationalist:”

The Man Who Misrules the World by Dr.

Emanuel M. Josephson, 1952

The media lecture for the week in Time magazine's
Nov. 4 issue (page 56) was delivered to The New
York Times. It began by pointing out that the
Times's editorial page was quite properiy upset
over the delay in Nelson Rockefeller’s confirmation
hearings and, as the paper put it, over the way
“dribs and drabs of information about Mr.
Rockefeller and the Rockefeller family—much of it
distorted—will keep filtering into the newspapers.”
True enough, concurred Time. But: “‘What the
editorial did not mention was that. the Times,more
than any other influential newspaper, has been
spreading those dribs and drabs across Page One
with an unusually broad brush.”

One could profitably explore, I suppose, the
size of the Times's brush and scrutinize its every
drib and drab. As I’ve discovered in recent weeks,
however, it’s infinitely more fun and a good deal
more revealing to examine the canvas Time and
Newsweek have worked up since Gerald Ford
nominated Nelson Rockefeller last August. I have
now read the Rockefeller coverage in 18 issues of
both magazines (Aug. 19-Dec. 16) and can report
that, after more newsmagazine words than anyone
would care to count, the reading public could
hardly know more about our new vice president
than it did on the day of his nomination.

On the week of Rockefeller’s appointment,
both magazines reacted as if it were the Second
Coming of George Washington. “Only rarely since
the days of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson has
a man with the stature of Nelson Rockefeller risen
to the U.S. vice presidency,”’ Time announced in its
Sept. 2 number. “Indeed, Rockefeller brings to this
new job an unprecedented portfolio of assets ... .”’
The magazine could barely contain itself: **. . . the
country was plainly relieved and approving. . . .To
restore national confidence it was necessary to pick
the best man for the vice presidency and few would

deny that Rockefeller fitted that
description. . . .Ford’s selection of Rockefeller is an
indication of his own political maturity... .the

Rockefeller style will at last have national scope.”

Newsweek, whose coverage was somewhat
better than Time’s because there was somewhat
less of it, more cautiously told its readers that this
“symbol of national unity,”’ this ‘“‘omni-talented
aristocrat,”’ “brought Ford’s homespun Presidency
a dash of glamor, a dollop of high style, and a
direct line to the Rockefeller lode of cash,
connections and brain power.”

From the start, Time tapped a gusher of
adjectives and descriptive phrases about
Rockefeller: ‘‘He is of extraordinary breadth. . .the
political equivalent of a natural force. . .exuberant
lifestyle. . ebullient. . tender social conscience. . .

Nicholas von Hoffman is a columnist for The
Washington Post and other newspapers and is the
author (with cartoonist Gary Trudeau) of The
Fireside Watergate (Sheed & Ward).

Time and Newsweek
regard themselves as
sophisticated political
observers. But their
recent coverage of
Nelson Rockefeller
leaves the impression
that he is the Second
Coming of George
Washington.

humanitarian instincts. ..enormously capable,
ambitious, idealistic—and also arrogant. . .a
patron of ideas. . .effusive. . .gallant. . .wears the
mantle of his heritage with easy grace.”

Again, Newsweek was somewhat more
restrained with: ‘*. . .well-qualified heir designate. ..
his thousand-watt incandescence. . .characteristic
take-charge air. . .his awesome energy, his polished
political skills and his broad experience...
charismatic. ..Nelson Rockefeller has been the
golden boy with the common touch.”

Golden Boy grew up to marry Happy, have
two sons and become Doting Daddy, we learn from
Newsweek, which disclosed that, ‘‘Nelson dotes on
them. . .taking the boys camping on the Pocantico
Hills estate and dandling them on his knee before
celebrated visitors.” If Rocky were given to
receiving his celebrated visitors while seated on the
crapper, as Lyndon Johnson is supposed to have
done, imparting such homey details might provide
the reader with information of some use or interest.
Instead, we learn that Rockefeller drinks
Dubonnet on the rocks and has ‘‘an ever-present
cache of Oreo cookies.’’ His views on foreign affairs
get skipped with the observation that “he was a
firm supporter of Nixon’s Vietnam and military
spending policies.”

Inasmuch as both magazines based much of
their approval of the Rockefeller designation on his
policymaking experience, Newsweek might have
provided a few facts other than letting the matter
drop after mentioning that the “handsome, blue-
eyed’’ “‘plutocrat” held State Department jobs
under Roosevelt and Truman. While both
publications could mention that he headed the
Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American
Affairs in 1940, there is no similar recognition of
his membership on the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board under Nixon. Considering Rocky’s
long history of South American involvement both
as a diplomat and as an investor, and considering
that the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board may
have reviewed American activities in Chile, the
omission is hardly a minor one.

Newsweek seems to feel a need to separate
Rockefeller from Nixon: “‘The Nixon Presidency
was a painful period for the proud governor.
Privately, friends say, Rockefeller despised the
selfmade man from Yorba Linda. . . .’”” What the
gullible rustic who wrote those lines doesn’t
understand is that, outside of insider journalism, it
doesn’t matter what these people think privately.
What counts is what they do, and if what they do
violates what they privately think, that only goes to
show the degree of their cynicism, which was
scarcely the point Newsweek was making.

Not only did Rockefeller hang in there with

Nixon as long as Charles Sandman, the sweet-
voiced New Jersey congressman who won brief
fame for himself in the House Judiciary Committee
hearings, but in 1969 he allowed Nixon to send him
to South America to gather information to be used
in framing our policy there. The only mention of
that trip in Newsweek concerns the IRS disallowing
a $400,000 deduction for money spent on ‘‘the
expenses of the distinguished citizens he chose to
take along.”

The least important part of that trip is how
much money Rocky spent on it or whether or not he
deducted it. That trip was a disaster for Rockefeller
for it showed that he was an object of universal
South American hatred. There were riots,
bombings, street fighting and killings in half a
dozen countries. In Ecuador, Rockefeller’s car was
overturned and ten people were killed by the police.
Venezuela and Chile took the easy way out and
cancelled his visit.

The report he wrote on that trip—published
by The New York Times's subsidiary, Quadrangle
Books, and therefore presumably readily available
to the brigade of researchers Time and Newsweek
employ—might be interpreted by some _ to
foreshadow Attica. More likely what it foreshadows
is Chile, but in any case, it does tell you what side
Nelson is on: ‘“‘Actually, the Church may be
somewhat in the same situation as the youth—with
profound idealism but as a result in some cases
vulnerable to subversive penetration.’’ The
Rockefeller hope for South America’s future is the
army: “The military man is prepared to adapt his
authoritarian tradition to the goals of social and
economic progress.”

Me important, Rockefeller’s reaction to
the South American ordeal represented no
departure from the views on foreign and military
policy he has held throughout a lifetime. Newsweek
doesn’t give them at all, while Time devotes about
three sentences to the subject. The treatment is
newsmagazining at its most prototypically
superficial. We learn from Time that “his
nondescript suits are invariably rumpled, his ties
unmemorable.” His ties do better in the pages of
the magazine than his foreign policy.

We do get a mention of the part he played in
drawing up our first regional assistance treaty, The
Act of Chapultepec, and in an almost unique assay
at analysis, Time remarks that it was ‘‘the
framework for future regional treaties such as
NATO.” The only other substantive sentence on
this general topic is one which reads, ‘“‘He was
wisely rebuffed when, in the urgent atmosphere of
the early 1960’s, he proposed state-supported
fallout shelters for every home.”

The clause ‘‘in the urgent atmosphere of the
early 1960's’ is either mendacious. or
unpardonably ignorant. The reason for “the urgent
atmosphere” about missiles, atom bombs and
shelters, was in no small measure due to
Rockefeller himself. The man is a nuke freak,
always has been one, and in the mid-1950’s,
operating through the instrumentality of the tax-
exempt Rockefeller Brothers Fund, he hired Henry
Kissinger to direct one of those famous studies of
his on the general topic of our defenselessness.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent
disseminating this document called /nternational
Security: The Military Aspect.

At the time, Rockefeller wrote that “by far
the main thing is to stimulate the public interest
and to focus attention strongly on the fact that our
country faces a problem that might affect our

[MORE] 5

survival.”’

And what to do about that? In the
document, Kissinger et al told the public that,
“Very powerful nuclear weapons can be used in

such a manner that they have negligible effects on
civilian populations.”

It doesn’t take any looking to find out that
Rocky was as much responsible for the fictional!
“missile gap’’ as was John F. Kennedy, who used it
as a campaign gimmick. The record is easily
obtainable in a new Simon and Schuster book
called Rockefeller Power: America’s Chosen
Family, by Myer Kutz. The Kutz book is as good, if
not better, than anything around on The Family, as
the Rockefellers refer to themselves in the best Don
Corleone-Godfather style; but if anybody over at
Time or Newsweek read it, they have not let it
influence their thinking.

i. is particularly—and deliciously—
instructive to compare Time's treatment of
Rockefeller’s 1931 marriage and the Albany Mall.
First, the marriage:

His first act after graduation was to marry a
childhood companion, Mary Todhunter Clark,
member of a Philadelphia Main Line family that
spent summer vacations near the Rockefeller
home on the coast of Maine. The couple’s ten
month, round-the-world, honeymoon was more
like a state visit, as members of both prestigious
tamilies vied to introduce them to sheiks, princes,
poets and artists.

Such effusions read like the scullery maid bragging
to her friends about the quality she works for. Now
for how Time skips around the Mall:

Let routine administrators tidy up afterward.
Rockefeller has exuberantly strewn New York
State with his political largesse. Most of it has
been beneficent—schools, hospitals, mass transit,
anti-pollution facilities—but some has _ been
dubious—his massive $1 billion concrete and
marble Albany Mall, which will rehouse much of
the state government when it is completed in
1975—five years late. To critics of the mall, who
have labeled it “instant Stonehenge,” Rocky
replies: “Mean structures breed small vision.”’

The subject is closed.

One of the critics of the Mall was 7ime’s
sister publication, Fortune (June 1971), which
charted its ‘‘gross mismanagement.”’ The Fortune
piece, the best and most carefully researched
article done on the subject, printed the fact that
one of the buildings in the complex cost $263 a
square foot. You could bring in the Taj Mahal for
less than that.

Newsweek makes passing reference to the
debt accumulation in New York State under
Rockefeller, but not the consequences of the debt
and the high level of taxation that came with it. For
that, a Newsweek reader would have to turn to
more obscure publications like Barron's (Aug. 19),
whose Robert Bleiberg concluded that, ‘what
happened to the fortunes of New York State
constitutes an open scandal.’ Writing under a
headline that read, “VOTE AGAINST ROCKY—
New York's Gain Should Not Be the Nation's
Loss,”’ the conservative editorialist pointed out that
*. . .the State of New York increasingly has become
an also-ran. In the two years ended July 1, 1973, the
Census Bureau recently disclosed, the Empire State
lost nearly 120,000 inhabitants. . Since 1958 [the
year of Rockefeller’s election to the governorship]
New York's share of the nation’s manufacturing
has declined from 11.2% to 9.2%. . for the first
time in history its share of total U.S. factory
employment fell below its share of the U.S.
population. . .the state’s economy has plunged
more than 20%, leading to a loss of over 400,000
jobs.” Since both magazines do mention that
Rockefeller has been tightening up on _ the
administration of the State’s welfare program the
last few years—a sign of growing conservatism they
explain to their readers—the failure to allude to

6 [MORE]

Time: ‘Only rarely since the days of John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson has a man with the stature of Nelson
Rockefeller risen to the U.S. vice presidency.”

Bleiberg’s data might be considered something of a
distortion.

Time, however, does mention the way
Rockefeller went about financing projects like the
Mall: ‘* . . . he devised a novel way of paying for his
programs. Rather than going to the balky state
legislature or to the voters who might turn him
down, he set up a host of quasi-independent
agencies...that issued bonds on their own
initiative and repaid them with fees collected from
the users of the facilities that were constructed.”’

Did Time also have an obligation to point
out that this is perhaps the most expensive way to
finance public works, that the system is
particularly lucrative for the banks and bond
underwriters, or that the ‘‘quasi-independent
agencies’’ are running amok with the bulldozers
out of all control? Did Time address itself to the
very live possibility that Rocky would get into the
White House and find the Congress as “‘balky” as
the New York State legislature? Did Time inquire
whether he would look for ways to end run the
United States Constitution as well? No, it did not.
And when a magazine can supply its readers with
the details of a vice president-designate’s 43-year-
old honeymoon to a woman he’s no longer married
to, but omits discussion of the constitutional
implications of the man’s official acts, it is making
a statement.

In the weeks following Rockefeller’s
selection and as information about his wealth, his
taxes, his gifts and the Goldberg book were made
public, both publications toned down a bit. While
Time displayed irritation at the delays in his
confirmation, it was printing sentences like,
‘** .. the Vice President-designate tried to reassure
people about his wealth. Gone was his earlier facile
claim that the economic power of his family was
mere ‘myth.’ ”

What Time failed to make clear, as did
Newsweek, is that the Family's fortune, although
legally divided into perhaps 84 trusts and a number
of philanthropies, is centrally controlled from the
S6th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Time gives the
address, not as the base of an operating entity
called Rockefeller Family and Associates but
simply as an office from which the brothers
conduct their philanthropic activities. While they
do indeed do that there, it would have been
somewhat more germane to people’s concerns
about concentration of economic and _ political

power to say that 1S employees of Rockefeller
Family and Associates working out of that same
office hold down 118 directorships in 97 different
corporations. Ten of those corporations have assets
or sales in excess of $1 billion. The situation with
corporate interlocks— meaning where two or more
board members from General Motors, for instance,
sit on the board of a second corporation with a
Rockefeller representative—is at least as
compelling. There are Rockefeller corporate
interlocks with 6 of the top 10 industrial and
commercial banking corporations and 5 of the top
10 life insurance companies. In the aggregate, the
Rockefeller combine has significant corporate
interlocks with companies having combined assets
of over $640 billion.

Where does this information come from?
Would reporters from the two magazines have a
hard time obtaining it? How reliable is it? It comes
from a report called Probing the Rockefeller
Fortune, A Report Prepared for Members of the
United States Congress, November 1974, by G.
William Domhoff and Charles L. Schwartz.
Schwartz is a new name to me but Domhoff is the
author of a number of books in which he has
described the social, political and economic
linkages of the American ruling class. Newsweek
finally did deal with the report in its Dec. 16 issue,
devoting one sentence to summarizing it and two
sentences to a denial of its implications by J.
Richardson Dilworth, who runs RF&A for The
Family. (Newsweek devoted the “Ideas” section of
its Oct. 7 issue to an excellent exploration of how
undercovered the superrich are, but apparently the
magazine's political writers missed the piece.)

The Rockefeller power can’t be separated
from its philanthropies. Neither Time nor
Newsweek discusses the implications that can be
drawn from having so many fellowships,
professorial chairs, endowments, etc., to give out. I
haven't checked it out, but they say that when
Colonial Williamsburg was first restored by the
Rockefellers they didn’t include the slave quarters.
With that kind of money, you can rewrite history
and make certain ideas fashionable by making
them profitable for those who profess them.

Rockefeller has taken the position that the
family doesn’t control the selection of beneficiaries
from the great philanthropic trusts nor how their
stock is voted. The evidence unearthed by the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington suggests
otherwise (The Disability of Wealth by Therese
Hess et al, November 1974). Their conclusion is
that the Rockefeller charities are effectively
controlled through their boards of lawyers and
other agents on the RF&A payroll, thus leading
them to quote the findings of the Soviet scholar, S.
Menshikov, who decided that ‘the Rockefellers
were able to give away hundreds of millions of
dollars into tax exempt institutions without losing
the economic power which ownership of that
money implies’’ (Millionaires and Managers,
Progress Publications, Moscow, 1969).

Maybe a dollop (to use a favorite newsmag
word) of Marxism might provide the magazines’
writers with that degree of cosmopolitanism
necessary to get a half-way intelligent handle on the
question of politics and Rockefeller money. Were
that the case, Newsweek might have saved itself
from the embarrassment of writing, “...no one
has ever caught Rockefeller mixing his political
career with personal gain.” It can hardly have
occurred to anybody but magazine writers who use
ideas like ‘‘the new [i.e. post-Watergate] ethos’’
that he ever had indulged in petty influence buying.

Brother Laurance has made perfectly legal
inquiries about routes on behalf of an airline he
owns stock in, but the problem with the
Rockefellers isn’t that they’re conniving for special
treatment but the general direction of economic

“if any American has written a finer play, I can't think what it is’
Edith Oliver in The New Yorker February 15, 1969

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Monday, January 6, 9:00 p.m. on ABC-TV
Mobil

(8:00 p.m.Central Time)

1975 Mobil Oi! Corporation

policy at home and abroad. Nelson and the Family
derive their power from the centralized, modern
state, which keeps the overly large, inefficient and
increasingly obsolete corporations they live off of
alive with concessions and
monopolies at home and military/CIA protection
abroad. The Rockefellers don’t want any petty
favors; what they want is to maintain the present
arrangement under which we have capitalism
without free enterprise. That's what Nelson
Rockefeller’s public career has been dedicated to.

This isn’t a thesis you would expect two
magazines whose profits are heavily dependent on
postal subsidies to accept. They ought, however, to
deal with it, to refute it, but not try to palm off the
notion that the danger lies in the possibility of
Nelson sniffing around the Interstate Commerce
Commission in hopes of getting some itty-bitty
form of special treatment. But far from refuting
such analysis, the copy suggests they never thought
of it and that they wouldn't understand it anyway.
The quality of the political analysis is what you
might expect from very bright, overly cerebral and
under-experienced preppies. So young and so
moralistic. as Time on the subject of the
Rockefeller gifts: ..Wholly innocent acts of
compassion ...motivated by his praiseworthy
desire to keep able men in government.”’ Never
mind the recipients of his money were already in
the top S per cent income category, the important
thing is that if Nelson didn’t have evil intentions his
acts can’t have socially undesirable consequences.
That’s a bit overdrawn since Time does remark
that such gift-giving is “obviously open to wide
abuse,”’ although not for reasons the magazine has
in mind.

It doesn’t come to grips with the fact of a
politician who is always owed but never owing, who
not only never has the normal, restraining money
needs of most politicians, but who can buy up his

subsidies, tax

ern ne ee

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The answer is in a shocking
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Please send me ______-__ copies of
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8 [MORE]

Newsweek: “‘...well-qualified heir designate. . .his
thousand-watt incandescence ... his polished political
skills and his broad experience... Nelson Rockefeller
has been the Golden Boy with the common touch.”

own party as well as the opposition. Why did he
give Meade Esposito, the Brooklyn Democratic
leader, a Picasso? Time lets it go by calling it
“curious.”

So be it, but what’s more curious is these
magazines’ view of politics and how it is ordinarily
played. Can the writers believe that as a result of
his recognizing a union as bargaining agent for
Rockefeller employees in the early 1930s that
“Labor never forgot and returned the favor by
giving to Rockefeller when he later ran for public
office." No wonder they don’t know why Rocky's
public works cost so much. Let’s hope 7ime knows
better and for reasons we can’t understand
preferred to lie.

As silly is the assertion he lost the 1964
Republican nomination because he was divorced
two years previously. Sure, and it was Ronald
McDonald who threw the convention to Goldwater.
The rank-and-file workers in his party have
detested him for years, and not for his pro attitude
on abortion but for his abrasive, wise-ass staff
who're cherished for their ability to talk but never
listen.

|: ae who’s made the acquaintance of
some of the staffers who work for Time and
Newsweek will find it hard to believe that a pro-
Rockefeller management ordered up these
simplistic fictions and that they were obediently
cranked out. Propaganda isn’t always the work
product of slaves, whores and cynics. Doubtless
many, perhaps all, the people who work for Pravda
believe every word they write. The strongly held
role definitions of contemporary big-league
American journalism make it next to impossible
for an editor to dare to tell a subordinate to lie, to
do an ax job, to knowingly distort.

Indeed, many of the criticisms made in this
article could be resisted on the grounds that they
are self-evidently made by one who has no use for
Rockefeller. So what this comes down to is who you
‘recruit for staff jobs on these magazines, the
process by which the copy is prepared and how the
criticisms of Rockefeller are met on the pages of
the magazines.

An analysis of the texts shows that both
publications presumed from the start that no valid
grounds exist for making serious criticism of this

man, unless it could be shown he had committed
an act of official turpitude 4 la Nixon. Hence we get
Time saying during the week of Rockefeller’s
appointment, “A few conservative diehards
grumbled. ... Nothing unseemly is expected to
turn up in his tax returns or his campaign
expenditures.’ In the same period, Newsweek
informs us that Ford’s choice of a Veep “seasoned
the President’s Middle American conservatism
with a soupgon of Eastern Establishment
moderation. And it dramatically broadened Ford’s
political base....A bare few voices on the
Democratic left and the Republican right protested
Ford's choice. ... The far more general response
was applause for Rocky... .”

The psychology of perception teaches that
we hear what we have a mind to hear, and
Newsweek heard applause. Some weeks later, after
the fuss over the gifts, the magazine, listening with
other ears, commissioned George Gallup's people
to do a survey which showed that only 44 per cent
of those asked thought the former New York
governor ought to be confirmed.

Poll taking is the cop out of contemporary
journalism. More to the point would have been an
explanation of what those “bare few voices” on the
left and the right were bitching about. An
exposition of that sort, however, would have made
it very hard to proclaim our hero as ‘“‘a symbol of
national unity.” No, better to concentrate the
coverage on the trivial turgidities of the controversy
over Victor Lasky’s Goldberg book, and to imply
that any broader based criticism was pretty much
confined to the likes of Angela Davis, a black,
Communist woman.

T..,. and Newsweek have a combined
circulation of 7.6 million and boast a weekly
readership of more than 40 million. Even allowing
for overlap and hyperbole, that’s a lot of folk.
Millions of them read the newsmagazines in search
of the kind of substantive political reporting so
lacking in their local newspapers. Of course, some
tough reporting on Rockefeller has been produced
since his nomination: Mary Perot Nichols, Phil
Tracy and Jack Newfield of The Village Voice; Saul
Friedman of the Knight Newspapers: Richard
Dudman of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and
Richard Reeves of New York magazine come to
mind. But they and others | may have overlooked
are clearly exceptions. Most coverage reflects the
same uncritical. if not fawning, perspective of the
newsmagazines. To turn to 7ime and Newsweek
for serious political analysis because your local
press fails is to end a fast with a sugar-coated
placebo.

Again, we're not talking about deliberate
mendacity. There really are journalists so gullible
that they can look at the Rockefeller record of 20
years as an atomic warrior and denominate it as
“Eastern Establishment moderation.” Few more
immoderate political figures are around today,
but the tepid mind-set of the sort who dominate
institutions like Time and Newsweek regards
anyone who supports equal opportunity legislation
ws a middle-of-the-road liberal. This is the
omnipartisan politics that Dr. Josephson
understood 23 years ago could be the vehicle for
getting Nelson into the White House.

It is also the political premise from which
the two newsmagazines are written and edited. In
style you'd have to call it Advocacy or New
Journalism, with the attendant difficulty
journalism without standards has of separating
fact from fiction. In the end, then, our only
complaint can be that they're sneakier about it
than Hunter Thompson and not nearly as much

fun. ®

BY DEANNE STILLMAN

One morning, a man from Brooklyn telephoned
Bob Grant at WMCA, 570 on your AM dial. His
voice trembled enough to embarrass anyone
listening, and his heavy Puerto Rican accent
rendered him nearly unintelligible. Worse, he had
a very bad stutter.

“B-b-b-ob,” he said, “I'd 1-l-l-ike to t-t-t-
talk about the F-f-ford p-p-p-ar—”’

“SPIT IT OUT, PAL!’ Grant bellowed.

The man from Brooklyn tried again. “B-b-
b-ob,”” he said, “I th-th-th-ink that F-f-f-ord m-m-
m-ade a d-d-d—”’

“PAL, YOU'RE WASTING MY TIME!”
Grant thundered.

So the man from Brooklyn said: ‘*Th-th-th-
ank you, B-b-b-ob,”” and hung up:

“He'll be back for more,” Grant muttered
into the microphone as he poured himself a cup of
coffee. *‘But I’m not going to get an ulcer over it. I
don’t get ulcers. 1 GIVE ULCERS!”

Bob Grant takes on the public every
Monday through Friday from 3 P.M. to 7 P.M..,
ominously inviting “you there with the curlers in
your hair and you with omniscient look on your
forehead”’ to give him a call. His show—which
offers advice, instructions, interviews with
“Newsmakers,” hourly diatribes against the New
York Yankees, illegal aliens and the “oil sheiks,”’
as well as a full panoply of loud and abrasive in-
sults—is immensely popular. An estimated 200,000
listeners scattered throughout New York City,
Long Island, Southern Connecticut and New Jersey
tune in every day. So sought after is Grant that the
studio phone continues to ring even after his of-
ficial phone-in hours, and he is in constant demand
as celebrity-speaker at various civic functions
around town.

For commanding such a devoted following,
Bob Grant—who, despite the volume at which he
rides the airwaves, is no bigger than a Panamanian
racehorse jockey—earns ‘‘somewhere very near six
figures,” and is currently negotiating a raise. The
opinionated phone man’s increased value is due in
part to his recent on-the-air announcement that

Deanne Stillman is a freelance writer who lives in
New York City.

Take That, You Lonely People!

Bob Grant's telephone
at WMCA rings all day
with tales from troubled
New Yorkers.

He zealously insults them
and they love it.
Says Grant: ‘I don’t
get uvicers. | GIVE
THEM!”’

he’d probably quit if WMCA management didn’t
offer him a raise. ““We don’t want to lose him,”
says Station president R. Peter Straus. But as Grant
tells it, not even a diamond as big as WMCA’s
5,000-watt transmitter in the Jersey meadows could
compensate for the heavy cerebral toll taken by the
gestalt of two-way radio.

“Radio makes me sick,’’ Grant declared
almost proudly as we sat in his office at WMCA
headquarters recently. Flanking the cranky little
man are golden plaques and Spencerian-scripted
awards from various social organizations: Baldwin
Harbor Hadassah, Congregation B’nai Jacob
Men’s Club, Yonkers Foreign Legion and many
other groups, whose members have been tuning in
religiously since 1970 when Grant arrived in New
York. Even during our interview the telephone
rings. A woman asks about breast cancer.
“Ma’am,”’ says Grant impatiently, ‘if you have
lumps, you should see your doctor.” Then comes a
call about Laetrile, the controversial cancer cure.
““Ma’am, don’t you have a doctor?”

Resuming our discussion, Grant says, “You
know, these people who are responsible for my
success infuriate me. They never stop calling.”’
Grant, of course, does not have to accept phone
calls when he’s off the air, and he obviously
wouldn’t unless it provided him with a chance to do
what he thrives on: scold his callers. Especially
those who are either so idle or so friendless that
they resort to calling Bob Grant hours after he
signs off. ‘‘I never know when someone important

erry Zimmerman

might be calling,’ he explains.

Grant insists he despises “people who en-
dow me with great omniscience and great cour-
age.’ “Omniscience” and ‘‘courage” is a recurring
combination of qualities in the Grant litany, one
that he applies to himself indirectly whenever it
seems appropriate. ‘‘People who have chosen me as
their spokesman give me too much credit. A certain
segment of my listeners are those who lead empty
lives and have aberrations. Invariably, when I meet
the ones who are most hooked on me, I find that
they are the most psychopathic. Their sickness
bothers me.”

Grant attracts many listeners who are
literally sick: shut-ins, alone and bedridden, great
masses of silent people who languished in front of
their television sets before two-way radio came
along. Now, the voiceless can partake in what
McLuhan called a “hot medium,” one that thrusts
them into the soap opera of daily life. Callers
discuss their own illnesses, a relative who is
diabetic, a friend who just had a limb removed,
and, over and over again, a_ friend/rela-
tive / acquaintance who is dying of cancer of the
throat / lungs / colon. Grant treats these plaints
with a condescending bedside manner that seldom
registers with the worried callers, many of whom
are profusely grateful for sixty seconds’ worth of
anybody’s time.

One immobile Bob Grant fan, Dorothy
(Dottie) Heiko, is afflicted with chronic phlebitis.
She lives in Fresh Meadows, Queens, a Bob Grant
stronghold, and spends every morning in bed with
Bob Grant. ‘‘When my husband leaves for work in
the morning,” Dottie says, “he puts the radio on
my bed right next to me and tunes it to WMCA.
Bob Grant is the best of the talk show hosts. He’s
great, superintelligent, aboveboard, and has good
political views.”’

One of Dottie Heiko’s neighbors, Muriel
Brown, is another incurable Grant fan. Muriel is
healthy now, but became hooked on radio gabfests

\ \

several years ago when she was ill. She feels Grant’s
insults are never unwarranted because “most
people are asking for it since they say the wrong
things when they call up.” As a result of Muriel
Brown's admiration, Grant has appeared for the
past two years at the Fresh Meadows Jewish Center
on “Candidates Night,” an event which Brown
regularly organizes. ‘We used to draw about 200
people on Candidates Night before he came to New
York,” she says. ““When he started introducing the
candidates, we would get about 600. Most of them
say they come to see him. They even line up to ask
for his autograph. We all like his political views.”

Grant’s political views are roughly equal to
those of many New York cabbies—a_ large
proportion of his listeners. Often, the articulation
of these views‘ approaches cabbie volume, par-
ticularly whenever Grant is offered the opportunity
to bark a standard refrain: “GET OFF THE

[MORE] 9

PHONE YOU COMMIE SKUNK!” Grant loathes
Communists off the air as much as he does on, and
is equally intense in his defense of Israel (and
opposition to the Arabs), although he is not Jewish.
Hence, his popularity at the Jewish Center. “It’s
wonderful to have someone who is not Jewish on
the airwaves take a defense of Israel,’ says Brown.

Grant handles about 12 calls per hour and
estimates that out of his total audience, only 2 per
cent ever bothers to pick up a phone and dial him.
This psychodrama includes, in addition to the ill
and friends of the ill, a comparatively healthy array
of hucksters, tricksters, hecklers and polemicists.
All will suffer any indignity for a soapbox, and
many appear to relish the chance for a public
verbal spanking. All calls are first received by
Grant’s producer, whose job it is to make sure that
a cross section of callers and subjects get through.
If a call is suitably interesting, it’s put on hold until
Grant ‘‘goes to the lines.” “If we didn’t screen
callers,’ Grant explains, ‘we would have nothing
but the women’s locker room of some geriatric
home calling and asking about social security and
diseases, because they have the greatest amount of
time to wait on the line. We also have to make sure
the regular phone callers don’t get through too
often.”

The Grant regulars include a man obsessed
with the sinking of the American spy ship, The
Liberty; a man whose only apparent reason for
getting up in the morning is to complain about the
‘International Bankers’; a lady who for the last
four years has been touting Sen. Henry Jackson,
and a man who checks in once a week with a threat
“to come down there and rip your toupé off.’’
Grant insists he doesn’t wear a toupé and dares the
fellow to come down and see for himself.

The producer also tries to screen out the
shills and hoaxers who frequently call; but if a
suspicious-sounding caller manages to convince the
producer that he or she has a legitimate story, the
caller is generally given precedence over others who
may have been on hold for as long as 15 minutes.
Grant himself can usually recognize ‘‘self-serving”’
calls by the studied manner in which any specific
caller approaches the subject. To test the screening
process, I asked a friend to concoct a tale of woe
and convince his producer that she desperately
needed to talk to Bob Grant. When she finally
reached the producer, he suspected her story was
a hoax. She convinced him it was not, and in less
than a minute she was relating her plight.

‘Hello, Bob Grant? I’m only 16 and I’m 22

“Hello, Mr. Grant, I’ve got a sation |
and I'd like your advice. My daughter is
an Aquarius and she’s engaged to
another Aquarius. |! know that
Aquarians don’t make good matches
and | don’t know what to tell her.”
“Ma’am, | don’t understand what the
problem is.”

“Well besides being an Aquarius, her
fiance is black.”

“Perhaps you should advise him to GET
LA VASECTOMY!” -

Y

months pregnant and living with a Puerto Rican. I
don’t want the baby because I am white and my
boyfriend is a junkie. I want to turn him in for the
$1,000 bounty.”

“I think this is a hoax,” said Grant. _

“It’s not a hoax,” my friend replied. ‘I just
don't know what to do about my junkie boyfriend.”

‘‘Ma’am, did you drive him to dope?”

‘Where can I get an abortion? I don’t want
my parents to know.”

“I don’t understand people like you. Do
what you want. Better yet, why don’t you GET
YOUR TUBES TIED!” (Male callers whom Grant
deems equally incorrigible are advised to *‘GET A
VASECTOMY!”)

L.. other WMCA talk jockeys (or “teejays,”
as they're know), Grant has led several station-
affiliated tours abroad, going to Israel twice, once
to Hawaii and once to the land of his forebears.
(Born Robert Gigante in Chicago 45 years ago,
Grant is the son of a violin teacher whose family
came to the U.S. from Naples.) Unlike Barry Gray,
Long John Nebel and other WMCA colleagues,
Grant also makes regular appearances before
various public gatherings. Some are in conjunction
with the station and its advertisers, some not.
Recently, for example, he has officially checked in
at the Jerome Health Food Store in Yonkers (‘‘a
tumultuous crowd,” he reports); a City of Hope
affair at the Americana Hotel (where he was on the
dais along with Abe Beame and Milton Berle); the
San Genaro Festival in Little Italy, and the
Rockland County Shield Association. Not long ago,
Grant rode in a police squad car from his home in

WMCA's Bob Grant on the job
10 [MORE]

Fred W. McDarrah

Flushing to address the 42nd precinct’s annual
communion breakfast at Alex and Henry’s
restaurant in the Bronx. Though he is “a friend of
the cops,” as one policeman put it, Grant was not
their first choice as guest speaker. They had asked
for Sen. James Buckley, but he declined.

More than anything else, Grant is in
continual demand as the celebrity speaker at
Jewish functions around town, and he speaks more
Yiddish than many American-born Jews.

Although he considers himself a “religious
eclectic,” Grant identifies very strongly with
Judaism. “The dramatic group I joined in high
school was heavily Jewish,” he explains. “I played
Jacob in Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing. That
had a big influence on me because the reception
was so warm, and it really made me feel good.
Then, some close friends of mine had joined the
Haganah because Israel was fighting for its
independence at the time and that seemed to be
very romantic. No matter what else may strike a
person about me, I like to see the underdog win.”

So strong is his interest in Israel that Grant
obtained the first American interview with Yitzhak
Rabin when he was named American ambassador
from Israel several years ago. “In California [where
he began his radio career] I had become very
friendly with the consul general of Israel,’’ Grant
says. ‘“*Y gal [Allon] asked me if I'd like to interview
Rabin. I said I would and the interview took place
in his hotel room in New York. No one else was
there and it was very nice. Rabin invited me to
Israel but I never went under those auspices.”

When Grant interviews someone like Rabin,
their talk is aired on his ‘“‘Newsmaker Line,” the
only part of his show he claims to enjoy and at
which he is quite skillful. Generally, the interviews
are live, with Grant deciding in the morning as he
reads The New York Times and the Daily News
whom he’d like to question. Recent selections have
included Jack Newfield (to discuss his ‘Ten Worst
Judges” article in The Village Voice); New York
Times economist Leonard Silk (to discuss what
Grant views as impending economic
‘“apocalypse’’); Governor-elect Hugh Carey,(whom
a Bob Grant poll predicted would win); and Muriel
Brown (to announce the cancellation of Candidates
Night).

At the conclusion of the Bob Grant Show,
Grant advises listeners that “Your influence
counts. EEEUSE IT!” He says he really believes in
this motto. ‘“Two-way radio is the only way a lot of
people can use their influence. What we think of as
quote the media unquote avoids naked opinion at
all costs. I am virtually nothing but naked opinion.
The people who listen to my show don’t get much
feedback from other media. They don’t get to
discuss the issues. Of course, it’s to my interest to
have people look upon me as some sort of oasis, as
something apart from the rest of the media.
Otherwise, I wouldn't really be speaking for them.”’
Grant now speaks for the voiceless not only six

f «ttetio, Bob, I’m with the Semone |
Parents of New Jersey. My son was
forced to go to medical school in
Guadalajara but meanwhile there are a
lot of foreign doctors studying in the
U.S.”

“Yes, the A.M.A. encourages these
foreigners.”

“Well, what can the concerned parents
do?”

“We have to demand legislation,
Ma’am. . . MY DREAM IS THAT WE’RE
ONE BIG FAMILY AND WE GOTTA

oor THOSE FOREIGNERS OUT!”

Wy,

mornings per week on WMCA, but also every week
night on WPIX-TV (Channel 11), where he and
liberal commentator John Hamilton engage in
ideological jousts over “the issues.”

Bob Grant views himself somewhat grandly
as a “‘living contradiction.” He likes being a
mouthpiece for the great masses of silent people,
and he wants to give them an opportunity to speak,
squeak, groan, croak, grunt, growl, tremble, or
whatever; yet he simultaneously despises these very
people for their inability or unwillingness to speak.
A modern Miss Lonelyhearts, he claims that, in the
final analysis, his daily evisceration is “just a job.”

But he does have higher aspirations. Not
surprisingly, what the little man with the big voice
would rather be doing is occupying political office.
His high school nickname was ‘‘Senator,”’ and he
recently considered running for Congress in New
York’s 10th Congressional district. He says he
didn’t have the financial inducement this time, but
he’s still considering it for the future, and half-
seriously muses: “I could probably be a dictator
because people want a strong-man.”

P..... listen to Bob Grant, I suspect,
because they do want a strong-man—and much
more besides. Grant functions mainly as a kind of
elementary school teacher for grown-ups,
delivering a verbal rap on the knuckles to anyone
he deems “‘out of line,”’ and offering approbation
to anyone who agrees with his quasi-informed
opinions. But even his approval is dispensed with
an undercurrent of contempt, suggesting that the
Bob Grant Show is essentially a kaffeeklatsch for
closet masochists, a sort of Dial-a-Spank.

Bob Grant, of course, is hardly the first
professional insult man. Many others have cashed
in on such studied hostility—not the least Groucho
Marx, Don Rickles and the late Jack E. Leonard.
Leonard, a furious, fast-talking fat man, is credited
with originating the insult routine, having spent 40
years of his life bad-mouthing customers in
nightclubs. Most of his barbs were aimed at the ego
of whatever celebrity happened to be nearby, and
when he was playing a crowd that had no
celebrities it was considered an honor to be singled
out for a Leonard put-down because, as he once
said, “An insult is only funny if it’s really
ridiculous, and it’s ridiculous if it’s aimed at some
really big shot.” Thus, targets of his insults were
automatically endowed with importance, while it
was also understood that Leonard was only kid-
ding. Likewise, it’s considered an honor to be
annointed with a Rickles insult, which Rickles (who

is supposedly a “nice guy” when he’s not making a.

living) always retracts by adding, “I’m only kid-
ding.’ The nicest of the wise guy comics is Groucho
Marx, whose classic quiz-and-insult show, “You
Bet Your Life,” is currently enjoying reruns.
Contestants for the show were always presented as
unwitting straight men and women for Groucho’s

f “relio, Bob, this is May from Queens. |
was on the Hawaii trip with you.”
“Why do you tell me that?”

“| just wanted you to know we knew
each other.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Listen, ’'m a widow. I’ve just met a
widower and we’re getting together for
Thanksgiving...He has three children
and | want to get them presents but |
don’t know what to get them.. .”

L eam, are you intoxicated?” D,

y

f stretio, Bob, I'd like your opinion on the )
woman’s lib.”

“How long have you been listening to
my show?”

“About a month.”

“You’ve been listening to my show for
one month and already you want my
opinion?”

“| like your opinions.”

“You like my opinions and you’ve only
been listening for one month. Well, Ill

tell you, | think a lot of today’s women
| have a CASTRATI COMPLEX.” ,

\

gags, which consisted of puns, ethnic jokes and
eyebrow-raising sexual innuendo. The humor was
always gentle, and Groucho, too, was quick to
point out that he was “only kidding.”

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that this
tradition spawned Joe Pyne, the King of the Media
Misanthropes in the sixties and Grant’s mentor at
KLAC in Los Angeles. Pyne added the obvious twist
to the art of audience insult: he wasn’t kidding.
When he took to the airwaves, he intimidated,
ridiculed and verbally bludgeoned anyone who
dared to call his radio show. Spewing out artless
and sometimes vicious variations of the street-

corner insult (“‘Lady, your teeth are in back-
wards’’), he quickly drew a large following. His
tremendous success (and attendant power) inspired
a spate of imitators, among them Alan Burke in
New York City, Gary Dee in Cleveland, the now-
retired Howard Miller in Chicago (who was kicked
off the air for applauding the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr.) and, of course, Bob Grant.

Recently I sat in on a Bob Grant show and
watched him take on the public from the safety of
his glass-enclosed radio studio. Crankier than
usual (he was afflicted with a broken thumb, a
result of playing softball for the WMCA No-Stars),
Grant answered a particularly inarticu!ate caller by
raising his coffeepot several feet above the mike
and pouring coffee into his cup on the table, thus
creating the sound of a mini-waterfall.

“Bob, I get the feeling you’re not interested
in my question.”

“‘Ma’am, what gives you that idea?”’

And then, cutting off the call and flipping
on the switch that allows him to communicate with
his producer and engineer without being heard by
his listeners, Grant said: ‘*You know, when he was
on the air Joe Pyne used to do crossword puzzles to
put up with the scum out there. But I pay attention
to my callers.”

The producer and engineer laughed; Bob
Grant didn’t. And then someone called to ask when
he would run for mayor. *

Bob Grant recently scheduled an exclusive in-
house interview with Khalid Halled Al-Hasser, the
Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO)
representative to the United Nations. But the
owners of the Arlen Building, at 888 Seventh
Avenue, obtained a temporary restraining order in
New York State Supreme Court barring Al-Hasser
from entering WMCA studios under a provision of
the lease which denies access to any person whose
presence might jeopardize the safety of other
tenants. A spokesman for Arlen Realty said there
had been bomb threats. WMCA president R. Peter
Straus says there had been none. Bob Grant’s
producer, Art Gahan, says Al-Hasser had been the
target of one death threat. (Death threats are not
uncommon in the radio talk show business.)

Several hours after the restraining order was
granted, the State Court of Appeals granted
WMCA a stay of the injunction on the grounds that
it violated First Amendment rights. Straus
maintains that it was the first time in radio history
that a landlord has attempted to bar a person from
being interviewed in a radio studio. “There are
about 7,000 radio stations in the U.S.,” he says,
“and less than 5S per cent of them own their own
buildings. The FCC requires us to put everybody on
the air with both sides of questions and a variety of
viewpoints.’’ Although the ostensible reason for the
landlord’s action was danger to the building’s
occupants, Straus says the real reason was “how
can good Jews allow the PLO-niks to talk on the
air? I agree that the PLO is a bunch of murderers,
but they are not the first and not the last murderers
WMCA will have on the air.”

Bob Grant ultimately did get a chance to
take on the allegedly murderous Al-Hasser, when
Grant contacted him by telephone shortly before
the appellate court lifted the injunction. (The
reversal occurred too late in the afternoon for Al-
Hasser to be interviewed in WMCA studios,
because he was leaving for Kuwait the following
day.)

“Is this Bob?’ said Al-Hasser.

“This is Bob,”’ said Grant. “Do you feel that
what happened today is a slap in the face to you?”

“To a revolutionary man, there is no slap in
the face. We are going to knock on the door until
the door is opened.”

The PLO representative and the talk show
host engaged in the predictable exchange about
Palestinian rights, with Grant asking Al-Hasser
about terrorism and Al-Hasser contending that the
PLO is not a terrorist group. Al-Hasser was asked
if he’d like to return to his birthplace, Haifa, Israel
(formerly Haifa, Palestine).

“Certainly,” he replied. “It’s the most
beautiful city on the Mediterranean. We call it the
pride of the world.”

“Then why don’t you?” asked Grant.

“How can I?”

“If you renounced terrorism,” Grant ad-
vised, “if you renounced war, perhaps you could
live in Haifa.”

Most of the phone calls that followed the
discussion were pro-Israel; a man _ identifying
himself as Barry from Queens, however, checked in
with an atypical viewpoint.

“What has occurred on WMCA today,”’ he
began, “‘should be remembered by all Americans
that freedom of speech ceased when they denied a
foreign representative which proves one thing that
General Brown was absolutely ri—”’

“Oh, come on,”’ Grant said. ‘Come, come,
this has nothing to do with Gen. [George] Brown
and his absurd statements [about Jews owning
the media].”

“Blame it on the Jews.”

Grant called Barry from Queens a two-bit
bigot and then aired a commercial which, like
Barry, espoused a nonkosher viewpoint. “Hi!’’ said
a voice. “I’m Jimmy Dean. I just wanna talk to you
about sausage.”

—DS.

[MORE] 11

The White House
JOHN OSBORNE

The Nation
WALTER PINCUS

Foreign Affairs
STANLEY KARNOW

Washington
RICHARD STROUT

a

Economics
MELVILLE J. ULMER

Films & Theatre
STANLEY KAUFFMANN

Books — The Arts ,

DORIS GRUMBACH

World Personalities
ORIANA FALLACI

Cartoons

WM owen” obo

PARRY Shei

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Hello Hollywood, Get Me Rewrite!

BY RICHARD SCHICKEL

The Front Page is one of the immortal—or at
least inescapable—products of American pop-
ular culture. Since its premiere on Broadway 46
years ago, it has been constantly revived by college
and community theatrical groups, and ever since
the nostalgia boom began a few years ago interest
in it has greatly accelerated. There was a highly
successful Broadway revival in 1969, starring the
late Robert Ryan, and it was transferred, almost
intact, to public television. A little later, there was
an equally well received revival at Britain’s
National Theatre, which is what, according to
studio publicity, inspired the producer of the new
screen version, directed by Billy Wilder and
starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, to
adapt it for the screen for a third time. In the
process, Wilder dares what’s about to happen here:
comparison of his film to Howard Hawks’s His Girl
Friday, which is one of the glories of the comic
tradition in our movies.

There are good—as well as merely trendy—
reasons for The Front Page’s longevity. It is as well
constructed as any comedy | can think of in any
medium. Walter Kerr was quite correct to call it ‘‘a
machine for surprising and delighting the audience
regularly, logically, insanely, but accountably.”’
Like other comedies of its period it is, in Kerr's
memorable phrase, “‘a watch that laughed.” In-
deed, it is now probably fair to start thinking of it
as a sort of Timex. For like that durable timepiece,
which survived everything John Cameron Swayze
did to it in the television commercials, The Front
Page has been subjected to terrible abuse by
Wilder and his faithful screenwriting companion,
1.A.L. Diamond—and it continues to tick away,
albeit fitfully and thanks largely to Matthau’s
service as its sturdy mainspring.

Construction alone, however, does not
account for the ongoing interest in the play. By this
time most people have come to regard it, quite
correctly, as the Ur-legend of journalism. The
smart-mouthed, cynical reporters gathered in the
pressroom of the Chicago Criminal Courts
Building, awaiting the execution of an alleged
radical and cop-killer named Earl Williams, served
as the model for generations of fictional journalists.
In the 1930s, a lively Hollywood genre in which
similarly endowed newsmen solved crimes and
served social justice under high deadline
pressure—yelling, slamming in and out of doors,
ripping out their front pages—while never missing
a gag line. was obviously inspired by the Hecht-
MacArthur success. And it, in turn, surely had an
unfathomable influence on the career choices of
several generations of newsmen.

There was something about The Front Page
and its generic descendants that gave the sub-
profession of newspapering a certain human
appeal lacking in the more noble recruiting pitches
of the journalism professors. I mean, it was all well
and good to understand that as members of the
free press we were a vital democratic bulwark and
all that, but it never seemed like much fun. What I
learned, in part from some reporters from the
Wisconsin State Journal who lived in the apartment
above ours in Madison when I was in college, and
had confirmed by cultural products like The Front
Page, was that newspapermen get to keep odd
hours, learn all sorts of juicy gossip they can’t print
but can talk about (endlessly), and that there was a
lovely camaraderie about the life they lead that was

Richard Schickel, the film critic, is a contributing
editor of |MORE}] whose most recent books are The
Platinum Years (Ridge Press) and Harold Lloyd:
The Shape of Laughter (New York Graphic
Society).

“The Front Page gave
the subprofession of
newspapering a certain
human appeal.
it was all well and good
to understand that as
members of the free
press we were a vital
democratic bulwark,
but it never seemed
like much fun.”’

very seductive, especially if you tended, as I did, to
be a loner and to get fed up with it.

Of the three film versions, the one that
stressed that aspect of The Front Page most ef-
fectively, I think, was the first one, produced by
Howard Hughes in 1931 and directed by Lewis
Milestone.* This is so because the human appeal
of journalism—and an incisive performance by
Adolph Menjou as Walter Burns, the managing
editor as sacred monster—is about all this rather
pokey, strangely uninflected movie had going for it.
Pat O’Brien, playing Hildy Johnson, the ace
reporter trying to quit newspapering in order to get
married and lead a quiet, nine-to-five existence,
was simply not strong enough to stand up to
Menjou. There was never the slightest doubt that
this Walter Burns would bend this addled and
juvenile Hildy Johnson to his wicked will.
Moreover, like so many early talkies, the film seems
rather distant and flat. This is not because the
camera is particularly static (there is plenty of
cutting, plenty of angle changes within each scene),
but because the primitive recording equipment
tended to rob masculine voices of their robustness,
and because, it would seem, the sound engineers
insisted that everyone slow down and enunciate
clearly when they spoke—fatal to the pace
desirable in a work like The Front Page. A little
later, directors like Frank Capra would insist that
their actors play scenes something like 20 per cent
faster than strict realism would dictate in order to
achieve the snappy verbal style so characteristic of
movie comedy in the 1930s. Around the same time,
directors like Howard Hawks worked out the
technique of overlapping dialogue, giving the
illusion that players were stepping on each other's
lines, thus enhancing the larger illusion that they
were tumbling over one another in their eagerness
to top each new topper.

Still, of the three movie versions of 7FP,
Milestone’s was probably the most “‘faithful’’ to the
original. The tatty press room never looked tattier,
its denizens more authentically like real working
newspapermen operating at the least exalted level
of their calling. His pacing gave their dialogue an
authentic weariness, and since Milestone was
congenitally unable to play anything strictly for
laughs, he gave a certain weight to the movie's
social pronouncements that later directors skipped
over as quickly as possible.

Social pronouncements? In The Front
Page? Yes, indeedy. When Earl Williams is on the

* | did not see this film, incidentally, until | was able to borrow
a hot print of it to prepare this piece. Like all of Hughes's in-
dependent productions—which include such historically im-
portant movies as Hell's Angels and Scarface—Hughes keeps it
off all markets for reasons of his own. Since it has been decades
since a large number of people could have seen this film, its
influence has obviously been legendary and, of course,
secondhand—through the imitations it inspired.

run he is taken in, fed and warmed by a tart named
Mollie Malloy. The gang in the pressroom converts
her simple act of charity into a slushy romance
designed to enhance circulation. She invades their
lair to protest, in the course of which she makes as
pretty a speech about tawdry journalism as you're
ever likely to hear. Mae Clark (more famous for
receiving a grapefruit in the puss from James
Cagney in Public Enemy) was good in the part, and
Milestone permits this to be a big scene. Similarly,
there is more earnestness in O’Brien’s Hildy than
in his successors’, and when he lists the journalistic
chores he’s pleased to be rid of (like stealing the
pictures of kidnapped children from their
distraught parents) a certain chill invades the air.
Hecht and MacArthur may have romanticized the
good old days of Chicago journalism, but they had,
after all, escaped and they knew full well what they
had escaped from. And they were not loath to
moralize about it, if it didn’t slow things down too
much.

They did not, however, perceive all the
ramifications of the relationship between Editor
Burns and Reporter Johnson. The former was
based on a real-life character, Walter Crawford
Howey, once the city editor of The Chicago
Tribune, later managing editor of the New York
Daily Mirror, and a man sufficiently after its
proprietor’s heart that he was one of the executors
of William Randolph Hearst’s will. He was a legend
among newspapermen of his time, apparently a
model of total unscrupulousness and therefore the
inspiration for a thousand well-embroidered
barroom tales. Hecht and MacArthur found him
an unbeatable comic figure, the personification of
all that was at once deplorable and raffishly at-
tractive about old-style journalism—a_ perfect
comic foil for their hero (and alter ego) Hildy. They
did not understand—and neither did director
Milestone—that a deeper relationship could exist
between the two men, that they were engaged in a
love story—or a love-hate story—of sorts.

It required the shrewd eye of Howard
Hawks to pick up the possibility that there was
more here than had met even the eyes of the
characters’ creators. As he tells the story, he hauled
out the script of The Front Page at a dinner party
one night and casually suggested that one of his
female guests read Hildy’s part. Once an element
of overt sexual attraction could thus be logically
introduced into the drama, it was given a central,
dramatic tension it had previously lacked. Or to
revert to Kerr’s metaphor, the machine suddenly
had a heart.

The rest is history—movie history, anyway.
Cary Grant played Burns, Rosalind Russell Hildy
in Hawks’s 1940 remake, which he called His Girl
Friday; and since Hawks has never given a damn
about messages, he skids as quickly as possible
past the musings on corrupt journalism which
marked the Milestone production. What makes the
film so funny is not only its breakneck pace, but
Hawks’s trademark technique of going against the
grain of his material—and our expectations for it.
It’s not just a matter of throwing a girl into the
lion’s den of the pressroom and having her emerge
as the smartest, toughest cat in the jungle. It is, as
well, having intelligent, urbane Cary Grant play
Walter Burns. It is really deliciously appalling to
see him stoop to such low shenanigans merely to
get out a scandal sheet. You wonder how he
wandered into this low line of work in the first
place. There is therefore an ambiguity, a mystery
here that gives the piece very interesting new
dimensions. Then, of course, since Hildy is now a
woman, the respectabie soul who wants to take her

[MORE] 13

Bettmann Archive

away from all this must be a man. Ralph Bellamy piays
him as a_ hopelessly square, prissy and mother-
dominated figure—and a nothing part becomes
something memorable. And so it goes throughout. The
film is beautifully cast—with an especially fine bit by
Billy Gilbert as a confused process server, arriving with a
reprieve for the condemned man and being shunted
aside by the venal politicians who must hang him in
order to win an election.

His Girl Friday is not especially realistic in its
atmosphere. Hawks has never been a man to linger much
over that stuff. The camaraderie of the pressroom,
which includes, of course, everybody casually stealing
details from everybody else’s story (in all versions, The
Front Page suggests that newsmen are pack-traveling
animals and thus supports the old Nixon line on them), is
very sketchily done. But who cares? Hawks has always
been an elegantly understated director, glad to credit the
audience with intelligence enough to figure out all the
background information they need on the basis of a few
hastily dropped clues. Which is perhaps the long way of
saying that he is a maker of highly stylized genre films, in
which he permits earlier, similar pictures to do a lot of
the expository work he finds boring. That, of course.

14 [MORE]

Culver Pictures

allowed Hawks to concentrate on the central relation-

ship—and on the gags—and to make a version of The
Front Page that is definitive, a version to which all
subsequent ones are bound to be compared and found
wanting.

Which is too bad for Billy Wilder and friends. His
Technicolor production is art-directed to a fare-thee-well
by the same group that did The Sting. The period
literalness both weighs the picture down and distracts
one from its central issues. But there are other, more
serious problems. Hawks demonstrated that the
relationship between Walter and Hildy had to be more
than professional if their squabbles were to make any
human sense. Hawks is famous for making stories about
what we have come to call male bonding. He has himself
said that these films about groups of men banding
together for mutual support while undertaking difficult
tasks (the cattle drive in Red River, for instance) or for
survival in a dangerous profession (the pilots in his many
aviation films) are in a sense “love stories’ about men.
Being, however, a straightforward and logical man, he
did the straightforward and logical thing by placing a
male-female relationship at the center of The Front
Page. To have turned up the intensity of the Hildy-Burns

HOWARD HAWKs's
ag

relationship and have it remain a male-male relationship
(Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau) would doubtless
have struck Hawks as either silly or, just possibly,
tasteless.

H...; of course, was working at a disadvantage
in 1940. The Odd Couple had not yet been a multmedia
success. And Redford and Newman had not as yet
pioneered the delights of cute, clean but nonetheless
romantically envisioned male pairings. Poor Hawks—he
didn’t even know to make his film a period piece, for he
casually updated it to a contemporary setting. All of
these things, alas, Wilder knows. And some other things
as well. He knows, for example, that newspaper people
tend to talk dirty when they're off on their own, and so
there is a steady stream of humorless expletives flowing
through the film. This ‘realism’ naturally spoils the
work's stylization almost as much as Milestone’s lumpish
direction did the first version. Worse, the obscenities are
played as if they were genuine jokes, and the effect is to
kill the really funny lines in the picture (not one of which.
it should be noted, are contributed by Wilder and
Diamond). The new freedom of the screen, as has so

often
artful

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often proved the case, is the enemy of art—or at least
artfulness.

Take, for example, the matter of Bensinger, the
man from the Tribune. From the beginning he has been
a familiar newspaper type—a man of some intellectual
pretense (he fancies himself a poet). He is careful to
dissociate himself from his poker-playing, booze-swilling
colleagues, working at a desk some distance from the
common table the rest of the journalists share, worrying
constantly and amusingly about germs and diet. He is
the butt of much humor, and it is in his rolltop desk that
Hildy hides Earl Williams after he escapes jail—an
important plot point. Here, for no reason, except that
you can do that sort of thing now, he is turned into an
overt homosexual, which again robs the film of a certain
speculative ambiguity, broadens it and makes it more
obvious.

Obviousness pervades everything Wilder and
Diamond have done with the film. Mollie Malloy’s role
has been turned into a flashy cameo appearance for

Carol Burnett. The psychiatrist, whose examination of
the killer becomes the occasion for his escape, is con-
verted from a virtually lineless bit player into a full-scale
parody of the old-fashioned Viennese alienist who is (ha-
ha) crazier than his patients; he has also written the
definitive book on masturbation—a very fair sample of
the kind of “improvements” that have been made on the
original. Then, too, there are all sorts of stupid attempts
to “open up” the film, notably a shoot-out when the
police stage a raid on a radical organization they believe
to be harboring the fugitive Williams. In all previous
versions, this has occured offstage with the
newspapermen’s accounts of the cops’ ineptitude
becoming.an occasion for strong, salty comments on the
matter. Here, witnessing the brutality, it is impossible to
see anything funny about it. One could go on and on
listing the vulgarizations of this stupidly literal film,
exempting only the estimable Walter Matthau. For he is
a born Walter Burns—a sly, low comic actor who looks
and behaves as if, in another incarnation, he must have

commanded the city room of some scandalous rag.
What is deeply annoying is that this new treat-
ment of The Front Page, desperate to be a la mode (there
is, naturally, material in it that directly encourages an
analogy between the press’s relationship with corrupt
Chicago pols and its relationship with the Nixon Gang),
drains the picture of all its fantastic, even mythological
elements. The pressroom crowd was never glamorous,
but they were, in the past, attractively subversive in their
humble way. Entering journalism, we felt that if the
Pulitzer Prize eluded us, if we never became star
reporters, we could at least be cheeky populists, tweaking
away at authority's long nose. But these characters are,
in the last analysis. sewer rats and, in the end, when we
realize that Burns has won, that he has saved Hildy from
deadening respectability, we are actually disappointed.
In the past, we were always convinced that the pressroom
was Hildy’s natural destiny—and not a bad one. In this
film, one wants him to get away from a mindlessness far
more deadening than respectability. That may, in some
sense, be truer to the realities of journalism today, but it
is lousy art and rotten entertainment. ro

[MORE] 15

West Coast
Counter-Convention
San Francisco

What happens when 2,000 journalists, writers and media folk crowd into one hotel for a
weekend of debate and discussion about the press? In the three year history of [MORE]’s
A. J. Liebling Counter-Convention, here’s what they had to say when it was all over:

**Journalism’s Woodstock. Collective catharsis’”’
—Time

‘*Putrid’’
—Editor & Publisher

. . reflective and stimulating.’’
— Washington Post

ee cae See Se Re ES a ae a Se ae a ee a ae a ee ee ee ae a a a ee

Send to: [MORE]
West Coast Counter Convention
750 Third Avenue
New York, New York 10017

Counter Convention
Registration Form

Yes, I’m coming to the West Coast Counter-Convention on February 21-
23. My check or money order is enclosed.

OC $15 registration includes 1 year subscription to [MORE].
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Olextend my subscription Ogift subscription (see below)

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Address :
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Note: The Sheraton Palace Hotel is offering a special Counter-Convention rate —
$25 single and $30 twin. If you wish to reserve a room, please indicate your prefer-
ence and the nights you plan to stay. (Rate is available for Friday, Saturday and
Sunday nights.)

| would like toreservea [single ()twin for:
O Friday night (2/21) (Saturday night (2/22) C Sunday night (2/23)

Peer eee ees ees See eS SF Se ee Fe SF eee SS SSeS ee ee eee es eeeee

. . .alot more fun than a moonshot.”’
— Village Voice

‘The most powerful gripe session in journalistic
history.”’ —Minneapolis Star

**Joe [Liebling] would have loved it.’’
—Saturday Review

Now you're invited to the first West Coast Counter-Convention, for a
weekend of flying sparks, controversial talk, a few parties and a
chance to find out where the press corps and the press critics stand
on topics like:

Advertising: Who needs it?

Who runs San Francisco?

Obscenity

Covering the Patricia Hearst Case

Television news: journalism or happy talk?

Citizens’ access to the media — fighting the good fight

Sports

Covering the campaigns and the statehouse

The alternative press: starting your own

Among the many participants on panel talks and workshops:

Marilyn Baker, KPIX-TV

Bruce Brugmann, editor, San Francisco Bay Guardian
Tim Findley, contributing editor, Rolling Stone

Penny Gentilly, San Francisco Consumer Action
Charles Gould, publisher, San Francisco Examiner
Franklin Greer, Public Media Center

Mark Harris, author, Bang the Drum Slowly

William R. Hearst Ill, reporter, San Francisco Examiner
Mary Alice Kellogg, Newsweek

William Rivers, Professor of Communications, Stanford University
Peter Schrag, author, The Decline of the Wasp
Richard Threlkeld, CBS-TV

Wells Twombly, San Francisco Examiner

Denny Walsh, Sacramento Bee

The place: Sheraton Palace Hotel, San Francisco
The dates: Friday, February 21 — Sunday, February 23

Use the coupon on the left to register for the West Coast Counter-
Convention. A complete program will appear in the February issue of
[MORE].

Nee AM Cae

BY THOMAS POWERS

I should think that one of the most important

moments in a serious person's life is the day he

understands that he needs a union and the

fraternity and bravery it represents or else he

might as well forget about his dignity. | am glad to

know that those who work at Grove Press will have

a chance to meet that moment today.

—Murray Kempton

The day in question was Thursday, April 30, 1970,
and the chance was a chance for Grove Press
employees to vote in an official National Labor
Relations Board election for representation by the
FLM Joint Board-A.M.C.B.W.N.A. (AFL-CIO).
The election was the culmination of a whirlwind
three-week organizing effort that hac begun with
the distribution of union designation cards at
Grove Press on April 8 and the summary firing two
days later of six of the organizers.

The union’s grievances were low wages,
inadequate fringe benefits, arbitrary management,
discrimination against women and, of course, lack
of job security. Management fought back fiercely,
charging that the AFL-CIO were ‘‘cold warriors,”
that ‘‘the labor movement is not what it was 20
years ago,”’ that unions were bureaucratic, racist
and sexist. A company official said the firings had
nothing to do with the firees’ union activities but
were only regrettable ““economy measures to better
withstand the pressures of today’s recessionary
period.”” A Committee for the Survival of Grove
Press, which bore about the same relation to the
employees of Grove Press as Nationalist China does
to China, argued that any union would be in-
compatible with the uniquely intimate nature of
publishing—*‘much less a union which lives off the
butchering of animals, including endangered
species.”

For all the organizers’ talk about free
speech, the right to dissent, the right to organize, et
cetera, et cetera, the union itself was really the issue.
Its full name was the Fur, Leather and Machine
Workers Joint Board of the Amalgamated Meat
Cutter and Butcher Workers of North America,
and the employees of Grove Press did not, in the
event, feel the tug of fraternity with workers who
were so indisputably ... workers. When the votes
were counted there were 34 in favor of represen-
tation by the FLM Joint Board and 86 in favor of
no union at all; and that, so far as unionization at
Grove Press was concerned, was that. The
management, having received an overwhelming
vote of confidence, responded by firing 70 more
employees during the following three months.

Attempts to unionize the publishing in-
dustry in New York are not exactly unprecedented.
The Book Publishing Guild of the CIO was active
(but unsuccessful) in the early 1940s, the FLM
Joint Board and TheNewspaper Guild gave it a try
a few years ago, and two other unions are active
now—Local 153 of the Office & Professional
Employees International Union (AFL-CIO) and
District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America.
Publishing is one of the three major industries in
New York which is still unorganized—the others
are the retail and the financial and insurance
industries. “Any forward-looking union in New
York,’ David Livingston, the president of District
65, said recently, “has to have its eye on these
unorganized workers.’’ Unionizing, after all, is an
industry too.

The current drive, however, is the direct
result of the Harper & Row strike last spring.
Publishing workers from a dozen houses who met
on the Harper picket line held a joint meeting early

Thomas Powers is the author of Diana: The
Making of a Terrorist [Houghton Mifflin], based
on UPI reporting for which he won a Pulitzer Prize
in 1971. His most recent book is The War At Home
(Grossman), a history of the antiwar movement.

Men and women in the book publishing industry

sense that conditions will never improve without

a union, yet recent experience at Harper & Row
and Macmillan shows that book people find it

|
|

j

in August where long-standing private discontents
suddenly emerged. Anne Kouts, of Harper & Row,
suggested that everyone identify his house,
position and salary, and they went around the
room:

“Putnam,”’ said one woman, ‘“‘copy editor,
$165 a week.”

“Simon & Schuster, administrative
assistant, $135.”

“Macmillan, assistant production manager,
$136.”

“Simon & Schuster, publicity assistant,
$135.”

And so it went: mailroom clerks making
$105; accounting clerks, $100; editorial assistants,
$120. There were 30 people at the meeting, all but
four of them women. Four people made more than
$200 a week; two of them were men. Everyone had
known that things were bad, but not that bad. The
conclusion was foregone. They voted to unionize,
committees were established to study unions with
which they might affiliate, and in October these
workers, their numbers by now considerably
enlarged, formally voted to join the newly
established publishing division of District 65.

When you first begin to look into the matter
it seems odd that publishing houses weren't
organized years ago. Wages are notoriously low,
fringe benefits are erratic, pensions are small or
nonexistent, and employees are completely at the
mercy of management. In some cases, especially in

hard to think of themselves as ‘“‘workers.”

aennegnnecnrncnnmanange ae sorvanoe poamageeneey

ththy, Hutt.

the smaller houses, publishers live up to their
traditional reputation as humane, cultivated,
thoughtful, decent, feeling, genuinely paternal
bosses who don’t have to be forced to do the right
thing by union grievance committees. In most
cases, however, especially in the larger houses run
by the bottom-line brigade, bosses have
approximately the feeling for workers that
dairymen have for cows. When the Harper & Row
Association sat down with management to
negotiate a new three-year contract last spring,
they found themselves dealing with Harper
executive Ted Miller, ‘‘the most stone-faced,
granitelike, gray and colorless man I’ve ever met,”
according to one union leader. His (and the
company’s) intransigence forced the union to
strike, a walkout which it survived but certainly did
not “win.”

At Macmillan last October, the true relation
between workers and management was revealed
even more nakedly when Raymond C. Hagel, the
chairman of the board, abruptly ordered a 50 per
cent cutback in titles and fired 179 employees.
Whole departments were wiped out, book contracts
in effect were cancelled; one employee with
Macmillan for 13 years, the head of the juvenile
marketing department, was told at 4 o’clock on the
afternoon-of Tuesday, Oct. 15, to put her business
in order and clear her desk by 5S.

Hagel’s moves were so peremptory, and
potentially destructive, that a number of editors

[MORE] 17

Cathy Hull

resigned in protest. Among them were Susan
Hirschman and Ada Shearon, the editor-in-chief
and managing editor of the children’s department,
who have since been hired, along with a third
children’s editor at Macmillan, by William
Morrow.The editor-in-chief of Macmillan’s general
books division, Aaron Asher, who had been hired
only four months earlier, also resigned. The firings
may have lowered Macmillan’s payroll, but it’s
hard to see that they strengthened the company.
Macmillan has hardly been one of the leading trade
publishers of recent years, and a lot of writers now
feel it would be simply foolhardy to publish a book
with a company in such apparent disarray. The
novelists Philip Roth and Jerzy Kosinski both with-
drew manuscripts they had submitted to Mac-
millan. A number of agents stopped submitting
new work to the company. The children’s book
author Ezra Jack Keats said he would no longer
publish his books with Macmillan.

Another result of the firings was a strike by
Local 153, which began organizing at Macmillan
last March. The union claims the firings were at
least partly an attempt to intimidate the union,
which had filed with the NLRB for a representation
election on Friday, Oct. 11. The company says it
did not formally learn of the filing until Tuesday,
Oct. 15, the day after the firings began; that plans
for the cutback had been underway since mid-
September and that a 9 per cent drop in profits for
the third quarter—that is, hard times—was the
sole reason for the layoffs. The unionists coun-
terclaim that Hagel told an editorial meeting in
July there would be plenty of advance money for an
aggressive publishing year; that he told Asher in
early October he could hire three new acquiring
editors (who do not come cheap), and that on Oct.
10, the very day the union tried to deliver a letter
informing Hagel of the filing, Hagel had personally
okayed an advance of $350,000 for a new book by
Albert Speer, author of Inside the Third Reich.

These counterclaims are in turn met by
counter-counterclaims which will eventually be
adjudicated by the NLRB. The NLRB will also,
eventually, rule on who is and who is not eligible to
vote in a representation election. The election will
eventually be held and Local 153, if it wins, will
eventually negotiate a contract with Macmillan
which presumably would make it a good deal
harder for the company again to fire so many, so
suddenly, with such short notice.

Maybe. The point is that the road is a long
one, and Local 153, like the FLM Joint Board, the
Newspaper Guild and the Book Publishing Guild
before it, may never reach the end.

P.. of the problem, of course, is that
publishers, already hard-pressed by the rising price
of paper, book-cloth, book boards, ink—of
everything, in fact, which goes into the physical
production of books—are not eager to add union
wage demands to their list of problems. This is
natural and reasonable, but not something they
like to come right out and say. Macmillan’s official
position on unionization is that it has no position.
“This is a large company,” said Bella Linden, the
company’s general counsel. “‘We already deal with
many unions. We negotiate contracts, we reach
agreement. If our employees vote for a union, we
will recognize and deal with it just as we would with
any other union. This is a matter for Macmillan
employees to decide. The question does not permit
management discussion.”’

The management of Simon & Schuster,
which has been formally notified by employees that
organizing is taking place, refused to say anything
at all, on or off the record. With one exception, in
fact, executives even refused to answer the phone,
and the exception would only say, in ten different

18 [MORE]

ways, that he would say nothing. He would not
explain his refusal to explain; he would not even
explain his refusal to explain his refusal to explain,
if you can follow that. His good-humored but
uncrackable reticence left one strong impression:
that the management of Simon & Schuster is
taking union activity very seriously.

Other executives and editors, speaking
more freely because their companies are not yet the
object of union drives, said that one basic reason
for their coolness toward unions is the belief that
unions mean rigidity, that they would freeze the
creative process of publishing by establishing
artificial barriers between ‘‘editors” and “workers”
who are in fact part of a common undertaking.
“There is a danger in defining jobs too strictly,”
said Tom Stewart, an editor at Farrar, Straus &
Giroux. “The best thing about publishing is that
you can define your own job. I’ve never met an
editorial assistant who didn’t want to be an editor,
and the way to do it is to start doing it. The better
the publishing house, the less rational its structure.
Things need to be read by as many people as
possible. We put out 100 new products a year—
probably more than ITT—based on the following
market research: one agent, an assistant or two, an
editor, an editor-in-chief. Three or four people say
they like it. If you put up a wall between assistants
and editors the whole process begins to break
down.’’(*Of course,” he added, “I can see the other
side of the coin too, that people don’t like being
asked to do an editor’s work without an editor’s
pay.”’)

Herman Gollob, the editor in chief at
Atheneum, feels that unions are after something—
money—which simply isn’t there. “If you call
publishing a business,” he said, “‘you’re crazy. This
is a crap game they’re trying to unionize. Is it an
exploitative industry? I don’t think so. The serfs
aren’t being crushed. Publishing houses aren’t
1930s Clifford Odets sweatshops—frightened
people slaving away in dim light with trembling
fingers. Salaries in publishing are commensurate
with the profits, and the profits are low. We’re
making money on perhaps one out of ten products.
I don’t think anybody makes very much money in
publishing. They want to talk about publishing as
an industry, but they’re not in it because it’s an
industry. You have to go “‘on your own talent.”’

_ Other arguments are made: the cash flow in
publishing is irregular; companies are rich one year
and poor the next. Union demands during a fat
year might cripple a house in a lean one. Banks
might withdraw their lines of credit. Small com-
panies might be forced to accept the offers of large
conglomerates. Worst of all, increased costs might
price books right out of the retail market
altogether, something which is already a danger.
The small houses, especially, because of their
intimacy and because of their financial fragility,
wonder if they could survive the pressures of a
union which was insensitive to the precariousness
of their position. These arguments are not without
merit, but the unionists have some arguments of
their own. If publishers.were candid about their
financial condition (common practice in many
other industries), then union members would not
press for money their employers didn’t have. More
important, they say, is the fact that publishing is a
big business with total sales of more than $3 billion
a year, according to the Department of Commerce.
There are 3,600 publishers which list titles with
Books in Print. But the four largest—McGraw-
Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan and Scott-
Foresman (a textbook house based in Indiana)}—do
more than a fifth of the total business, up from 16
per cent in 1958. The eight largest do 32 per cent of
the total, and the 20 largest do 57 per cent. In other
words, publishing is dominated by large companies
with large staffs (18,000 editorial and business
workers in New York alone) which have far more in

common with The Ford Motor Company than they
do with small houses like Atheneum or Farrar,
Straus.

Even a publishing house like Simon &
Schuster, which is small compared to the giants,
had total sales of $45.2 million in 1973, of which
$1.5 million was profit. Personnel costs, which
average around 25 per cent for most industries,
were only 19 per cent of Simon & Schuster’s total
expenses, which helps to explain why one clerical
worker was paid only $112 a week last January.
‘People are afraid to ask for raises,”’ she said. “I
understand that someone did go down to see Mister
—and he said, ‘Well, if you’re not satisfied and if
you're not happy, then you know what to do about
it.’ I spoke to my supervisor and he said ‘Oh Ethel,
don’t worry, you'll get, you'll get.’ ’’ She did: a $5 a
week raise to $117, after 19 years with the com-
pany.

Union organizers say it is not always easy to
judge pleas of poverty. Public figures, which show a
27 per cent increase in Simon & Schuster profits
for the first quarter of 1974, may or may not
conceal mysteries. Leon Shimkin, for example, the
chairman of the board at Simon & Schuster, is one
of the three principals in SJF Realty Associates,
which owns a building at 1 West 39th Street that it
rents to Simon & Schuster. Union organizers would
like to know how much rent the company pays.
Simon & Schuster owns half of Pocket Books Ace
Distributing Co., Inc.; organizers would like to
know how that company is doing. What they do
know is that the employees in the 360 publishing
houses in New York (104 of them with more than
20 employees each, and a handful with hundreds)
are badly paid.

B wiisine employees lack almost
everything unions might help them win, with one
important exception: they receive, in lieu of money
and job security, something called “psychic
wages.” Union organizers speak about psychic
wages with a special contempt. ‘Try using your
‘prestige’ or ‘lifestyle’ to pay for groceries the next
time you shop,” says one leaflet put out by Local
153. Do psychic wages go up with inflation?
unionists ask. Can you use them to pay the rent?
Do you go on getting them after you’ve been fired
or forced to retire at 65 with no pension? Do
psychic wages compensate for the systematic
discrimination against women?

The answer, for a lot of publishing workers,
is that yes, they do.

There is some special reward in working
with books, even peripherally; some value in
association with the life of the mind, however
remote; some excitement in connection with writers
who win prizes and editors who lunch at the Italian
Pavillion, however distant; some pleasure in the
easygoing ways of publishing houses which make
the low wages and slow advancement worth the
candle. Every June the hunger for psychic wages
brings a tidal surge of college graduates looking for
jobs in publishing.

“I get a dozen letters a week from these
people,’ says Herman Gollob, the Atheneum
editor. “Most of them are from Ivy League schools
or the Seven Sisters. They’re all the same: ‘I’m an
English major, I’ve always wanted to get into
publishing, to work in a small, intimate house like
Atheneum, to publish good books that matter.’ I
answer every letter the same way. ‘There aren’t any
openings at present, we’re too small to have a
training program, but if you’re in the city and want
to drop in....’ ”

They do drop in: serious young women of
sensibility and quiet ways, young men with ex-
pensive educations who don’t want to teach, don’t

aaa ihe WEAN,

1 alle

oe on

want to go to medical school, don’t want to be
lawyers, above all don’t want to go _ in-
to... business. They like reading manuscripts,
editing copy, writing jacket blurbs (even if the
books don’t always matter). They like the at-
mosphere and the ease: they can come in late, leave
early, take the occasional day off, return from
lunch at 3 without anyone minding, so long as their
work is done. Often, in small houses like Atheneum
and Viking, where everyone is on a first name basis
and the most famous authors must pass through
the same small office, they stay on long after they
ought to move, not caring about the low pay and
the endless wait for a full editor’s position to open,
because they... well, they love it.

Of course love cannot be banked. Even-
tually, even in publishing houses, reality asserts
itself, and the young men and women who go into
publishing because they love books leave it because
they must also live. For their employers their
departure may occasionally be sorrowful but it is
seldom traumatic: in June, a new army of the
innocent will march into New York.

“We failed for a lot of reasons,” says Cicely
Nichols, one of the organizers at Grove Press who
was fired four years ago. “Part of it was our own
fault, part the union’s. They didn’t realize how
ignorant of unions we were. They didn’t know what
snobs we were. We were afraid of dropping down a
class and associating with workers. They came on
in their gravelly voices, fists pounding the table,
telling us we had to fight the bosses. A lot of people
were turned off by the way they dressed, their
mannerisms, their accents, all the matters of taste
and style which distinguish classes. We were too
stupid to put off the election until we had a chance
to deal with the anti-union prejudice. But the main
problem was that the union did not realize we
weren't ‘workers’ in one important respect: we were
not alienated from our work. We worked for
something more than a paycheck. We took an
interest in our ‘product.’ We cared about books.”

A viicscion prejudice and the seductions of
psychic wages have been the principal problems
facing the Harper & Row Association, still the only
true union in publishing, since it was founded in
1942 with at least some encouragement from a
management that wanted to freeze out the CIO's
Book Publishing Guild. As a house union staffed
entirely by volunteers, the HRA’s fortunes and
militancy have fluctuated erratically over the years.
It has been some times energetic, more often
moribund. With the rise of the women’s movement,
which has been especially strong in publishing
because the business has been traditionally staffed
by women and run by men, the HRA revived. It
supported the Grove Press union effort and for
a while worked closely with the FLM Joint Board.
In 1971, FLM negotiators worked closely with
HRA and won a much-improved contract for the
association, which repaid FLM, by voting over-
whelmingly against affiliation. “They kill J/ittle
animals,” said one Harper editorial worker,
echoing the anti-union prejudice of the Grove Press
workers. (Nevertheless, the FLM Joint Board,
which has had an opportunity over the years to
learn something about fraternity, strongly sup-
ported the HRA during its strike last spring,
donating $1,000, advice on practical matters like
applying for food stamps, and pickets for the HRA
line.)

When negotations for a new contract ap-
proached last year, the HRA appealed to The
Newspaper Guild, an “‘unfortunate’’ choice, ac-
cording to association leaders, because the guild
has troubles of its own. Its only virtue, in fact, was
its vaguely ‘creative,’ white-collar image, which
association leaders felt they could sell to their

& OF
WORKE

ASSOCIATIO
HARPER & od

EMPLOYEE«

Pickets in front of Harper & Row in Manhattan

members. The contract proposed by the guild was a
heady document drafted for a publishing Heaven,
not the Harper & Row reality: among other things
it would have provided for a year of paid maternity
leave, three weeks of paid paternity leave, birthdays
off, free dependent coverage, psychiatric and
optical care, and a minimum wage of $215. (By way
of contrast, the actual minimum wage at Harper &
Row now, following a three-week strike, is only
$110.) *‘We were so excited when we saw it,” said
Leslie Moore, a member of the HRA executive
board. ““We knew it was outlandish, but it had so
much that we wanted. We told ourselves that at
least it would be a strong bargaining instrument.”’

Actually, it was a disaster. Company
negotiators refused to deal with the draft at all and
insisted on proceeding from the previous contract
which had been negotiated by the FLM. The guild
negotiator fell conventiently ill and withdrew. The
HRA brought in Harold Cammer, a lawyer, but
talks proceeded slowly. Meetings were held solely
to schedule meetings. The company refused to
make proposals of its own, simply rejecting HRA
proposals with a flat ‘no,’ according to the HRA.
It was a long, slow, agonizing process ending with a
company offer that was condescendingly meager—
a package that amounted to $13 a week. HRA
members felt that “self-respect, if nothing else,”
according to Leslie Moore, demanded a strike.

On Monday, June 17, about 270 Harper &
Row employees went out. The editorial offices were
certainly inconvenienced, perhaps even injured,
but they did not shut down. Repeated attempts to
persuade the Teamsters Union to close the Harper
warehouse in Scranton, Pa., all failed. Early in
July, as support for the strike began to erode, the
company made a_ slightly improved offer,
presumably to avoid disruption of their sales efforts
during the American Library Association con-
vention later in the month. The HRA, worried
about attrition of its ranks and a good deal wiser
about what it takes to make a strike—and a
union—work, voted to accept the Harper offer.
“They wanted to break the union,” said Leslie
Moore. “but we went out together and we came
back together. We had never really been a union
before the strike, but it turned us into one. A year
and a half ago unionizing wasn’t even in my
vocabulary.”

EDIToR! EDITORIAL

!

|

Michael Cosson

ASSOCIATION OF

An important result of the strike was
creation of the citywide organizing committee
which voted in October to join District 65, partly
because of its excellent record on civil rights and
the war in Vietnam (it was probably the first union
to come out in opposition), more importantly
because of the union’s energy and commitment.
Kitty Krupat, a production editor at Simon &
Schuster, and Bernice Krawcyzk, the co-president
of the HRA, have been hired by District 65 as full-
time organizers. The HRA itself, after 30 years of
trying to decide where it stood—with the editors
who were also their bosses, or with the ‘‘workers,”’
or in some strange publishing limbo in between the
two—finally surrendered its prejudices and ac-
cepted the idea of fraternity. On Nov. 8, the HRA
voted to affiliate with District 65—retail clerks,
corrugated box makers, warehouse workers and
all—by a vote of 153 to 71.

U..: organizers have made progress since
the Harper strike, but it has been slow. Local 153 is
public at Macmillan, Putnam and Globe (a sub-
sidiary of Esquire), and District 65 is public at
Simon & Schuster. Organizing by other groups
affiliated with District 65 is going on at a dozen
houses and may be within a month or two of going
public at five of them. But even where union
sentiment is strongest, organizers’ are proceeding
cautiously. Harassing of union organizers is, of
course, illegal—but hardly unknown. Redress is
uncertain and long in arriving. The editors fired by
Grove Press four years ago eventually won back pay
and reinstatement, but it took four months, and
they were fired again three days later for
“economic reasons.” Theirs was a moral victory
which, like a psychic wage, is not negotiable.

The Harper strike last spring encouraged a
heady sense of imminence and possibility; a lot of
union sympathizers thought there would be
elections by November, contracts before Christmas.
The Macmillan strike, however, has had quite the
opposite effect: Local 153 claims the mass firings
were a union-busting attempt, and a lot of
publishing employees believe them. “I've talked
many times with one woman editor who's in favor
of a union but won't sign a designation card,”’ says

(continued on page 26)
[MORE] 19

/~.... AND WHAT'S >
{OUR FAVORITE
MONSTER?

‘ILove a Parade’

BY RICHARD WEXLER

[Television news] can’t go into the depth that a
newspaper does. We don’t have the time or the
space.
Walter Cronkite on the Dick Cavett
Show, Oct. 17, 1974.

During a nine-week period that began last Sep-
tember, I watched the seven hours of news that five
New York television stations (WABC, WNBC,
WCBS, WNEW dnd WPIX) serve up every
weekend. As a result, I can reliably report that Nell
and Emmett Gray of McDowell County, N.C. raise
bears, there are 38,000 horses in New Jersey, some
people in New Orleans speak with a Brooklyn
accent, a national canoeing champion trains with
his dog, the record for hang gliding is just under 12
hours, and that Penny and Pam Carter are both
paramedics in Atlanta—and identical twins, too.
More important, perhaps, I learned that
WCBS’s Paul Dandridge can beat WNEW’s
Marvin Scott at darts—a contest that took place in
living color when they (and reporters from two
other stations) covered the First Annual Women’s
Professional Dart Championship. During my
survey period, weekend viewers were also treated to
art shows in Manhattan, Harlem, Chinatown,
Newark and Brooklyn Heights, this last prompting
WCBS’s Lucille Rich to observe that, “It wasn’t
just trees growing in Brooklyn today.”’ In addition,
there were block parties on 84th Street, Perry
Street and Flatbush Avenue; parades honoring

Richard Wexler, a senior at Richmond College on
Staten Island, N.Y., won |MORE)’s 1974 Student
Media Criticism Award for his article on “‘The
Great Albany Sex Scandal’ that appeared last
July.

20 [MORE]

In an act of astonishing
stamina, the author
monitors the weekend
news of five New York
television stations for
over two months
and survives—albeit
not without an acute
case of trivialitis.

Pulaski Day, Steuben Day, Afro-American Day,
Columbus Day and Hispanic Day, plus a cycle-a-
thon, a roll-a-thon and a marathon.

In fairness, it should be noted at this point
that these local stations do recognize a hard news
story when it comes along, and thus didn’t miss
President Ford’s Sunday pardon of Richard
Nixon. And I think it’s safe to say that, had
television been around at the time, all five outlets
would have been on top of the Sunday bombing of
Pearl Harbor. But as weekend viewers know (and
there are as many of them in most cases as during
the week), nothing entrances the stations’
assignment editors quite like a solid piece of trivia.

On Oct. 19, a Saturday, WCBS’s Rich was
sent to the Third Annual Contest of the Garden
State Horseshoers Association in Sommerville, NJ.
‘The space age has caught up with horseshoeing,”’
Rich reported between interviews with a few
dedicated blacksmiths. ‘‘Years ago, horses were
something enjoyed by the wealthy and Uncle Sam

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and his cavalry,’ Rich was told. “Today, anyone
can have a horse.” Why does somebody go into this
line of work? “‘Because I had horses of my own and
had problems getting a horseshoer to come out.”
Three weeks earlier, Rich was dispatched to the
Home Sewing Jamboree, where “the Celanese
robot delighted both kids and adults.’’ More
recently, another WCBS reporter got into the spirit
of the Famous Monsters Convention by asking
people ‘‘who’s your favorite monster’’ and doing
his closing ‘‘stand-upper”’ dressed as the Wolfman.

For a while, WCBS filled time with Lee
Radziwill interviews of such luminaries as Peter
Benchley, Gloria Steinem, and Halston, the fashion
designer. During the course of the latter, Channel 2
viewers learned that Halston sees nothing wrong
with designers lending their names to other
products. He noted that he himself was deeply
involved in the creation of a new line of perfume.
“Just the bottle alone is a revolutionary concept!”’
he disclosed.

A patrolman who displeases his captain,
goes the cliche, will wind up pounding a beat on
Staten Island. The weekend news is Channel 2's
Staten Island. If you are assigned to the weekend it
means that ‘‘you’re on somebody’s shit list,”’ says a
‘former WCBS reporter. ‘‘When I first worked the
weekend beat at Channel 2 it was fun. There were
good people working on the show and the big
bosses weren't around. Then they made the
program a form of punishment and morale sank
around the ankles.” Tom Phillips, producer of
Channel 2’s weekend programs, originally agreed
to be interviewed on the subject, but changed his
mind after he spoke to his bosses and found that

“they were violently against it.”” News director Ed
Joyce also refused to be interviewed.

Weekend news at WNBC (Channel 4) is
almost as vapid as at Channel 2. For ‘the record,
Lynne Shifflett, the producer, also declined to
be interviewed. During my trivia-watch, WNBC
covered most of the non-events staffed by WCBS,
but was not totally lacking in enterprise. On
Sunday, Sept. 29, reporter Mary Alice Williams
asked a 72-year-old contestant in the Fifth Annual
New York City Marathon to assess his chances.
“Well, if | don’t get a muscle pull or if I don’t get
an upset stomach my chances are pretty good.”’
That same night, reporter Steve Jones had an
exclusive interview with a cross-country bicyclist
name Mike.

Jones: Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hello.

Jones: Welcome to Manhattan.

Mike: Thank you.

Jones: I think the most obvious question at
a time like this is “‘why.”

Mike: Well, there was a chance to establish
a round-trip record both ways across the country
and I felt that it was time for me to do that.

Jones: Okay Mike, best of luck to you.

Mike: Thank you, thank you very much.

The interview done, Jones reported:
‘Michael says that the first 3,000 miles from west
to east were difficult. But he also says that the
3,000 miles on the way back could be even
tougher.”’

inci 4 is somewhat more reliant on
world and national news than Channel 2. But this
dose of information from outside the New York
metropolitan area is largely redundant given the
half-hour of network news run every Saturday
(Sundays, too, except when preempted by a football
game). Ken Alvord, a WNBC reporter, suspects
that, as at Channel 2, the weekend shift is
sometimes used as a means of discipline for
reporters and other news personnel at Channel 4.
“The funny thing is, you often don’t know what
you've done,”’ Alvord says. “‘It’s their way of letting
you know where you stand.” Still, working the
weekend shift at Channel 4 does have its com-
pensations. The programs are seen by many more
people than the early evening weeknight show and
it can be financially rewarding. Television reporters
at Channel 4 and some other stations receive a set
fee, over and above their salaries, for each story
they do, and weekend reporters usually cover more
stories.

WABC (Channel 7) has the longest single
weekend program; a full hour between 6 and 7
Sunday night. With little “breaking news’ and a
full week's lead time, the slot offers a chance to do
serious stories for which there is no time during the
week, and occasionally WABC does. But reports on
the status of the West Side Highway, a program for
autistic children and a Harlem senior citizens
center are clearly the exceptions. More typical of
“Eyewitness News”’ on Sunday was reporter Robert
Miller’s announcement one night that, ‘Today
proved that not everything brought on by
Watergate is necessarily negative. If there hadn't
been a Watergate there wouldn't have been a
parade in Union N.J. today.” The re-opening of the
Prospect Park merry-go-round was reported in
depth by Channel 7, as was a story about a girl
playing Little League football. Along with these
film reports were short insights such as: ‘‘There’s
an item today that tells us an anti-pornography
booklet mailed to all Southern Baptist ministers in
Texas may have to be recalled. The reason, says the
Baptist Church, is that the pamphlet is too graphic
and contains so much detail that it might be

considered pornographic itself.”

WABC, WCBS and WNBC, the three
network-owned stations, produce their own
features. WPIX (Channel 11) puts its “‘Saturday
News at Nine”’ together with no local film crew at
all. And the program even dispenses with an on-
camera anchorman, thus allowing the station to
shut down the studio early and send everybody
home. The bulk of Channel 11's weekend material
comes from Television News Inc. (TVN), a
“newsfilm” syndicate. The fluff on other New York
stations at least takes place in the New York area.
The TVN reports on Channel 11 deal with such
issues as the rabbit problem at the Desert
Botanical Gardens in Arizona. During this report,
information-starved New Yorkers were finally told
the answer to the question: ‘‘How does a rabbit eat
a cactus?”

“No trouble at all,” according to W.H. Earl,
director of the gardens. ‘‘When they’re hungry
they'll eat anything, just like a goat, and they'll just
nibble off the spines and work into the plant and
we often figure that they save some of the spines to
pick their teeth.”’ To solve the problem, Earl has
had to put a chickenwire fence around each of his
plants. “From Tucson to Yuma, we’ve cleaned out
all the stores [to get fencing],”” he said.

Channel 11 also carried the story about the
family that raises bears. “The Grays raise one or
two bears every year,” according to the TVN
reporter, “keeping them in the house until they get
too big and start tearing the place up. Nell Gray
even sleeps with the cubs in the winter to keep
warm. The Grays have four bears now: Sally,
Polly, Ellie-May, and Mike. They don’t sell the
bears they raise, that would be like selling your own
children.” The reporter added that the bears make
excellent “watchdogs.”

Other great moments from Channel 11 and
TVN included the aforementioned stories about
the canoeist and his dog and hang gliding, plus
reports on the plight of two Georgia .alligator
ranchers and a 91-year-old man who was running
for governor of California. Channel 11’s Sunday
program does have an anchorman and a camera
crew, but it still relies heavily on wire copy and
TVN.

Ww (Channel 5) also subscribes to
TVN, but Susan Ludel, the station’s weekend news
producer (and weeknight co-producer) uses the
service sparingly. Ludel also avoids expanded
sports and weather reports, and what she calls the
“sweet, cutesy features’ that characterize other
weekend programs. Even crime stories, a staple of
Channel S's weeknight news, get less attention on
the weekends. But don’t look for local stories to fill
the gap. Lacking network affiliation, Channel 5
provides three times as much world and national
as local news within its one weekend program.
Nor does Channel 5 abstain entirely from playing
the feature game. Since all stations operate with
strictly limited resources for weekend news, once a
reporter and film crew have been sent to a story,
whatever they come up with must usually be put on
the air.

One Saturday, the Channel 5 crew showed
up at what was supposed to be a “giant jam
session” of ‘‘avant-garde music’ in Central Park.
The musicians showed up, too, but no one else did.
This left reporter Barbara Lamont with little to do
except ask one of the organizers why no one else
was there.

“We had a communications gap,” he said,
in part.

‘Tell me about the group,” Lamont asked,
“how did they get here?”

“Well the group got here by two

automobiles, we drove over a little while ago... .

In general, all five stations ‘frown upon
your calling up [from the scene of an assignment]
and saying that there's no story,”” says a former
WCBS reporter. “I’ve been told before I left on a
story: ‘I need 2:45 on that story,’ not ‘I hope this
story is good enough for two minutes and forty-five
seconds.’ I understand [the producer’s] problem.
He needs to get something on the air.”

AA... weekend political coverage is con-
ducted in accordance with a standard ritual. Every
Sunday morning, the three network-owned stations
have at least one program on which a local political
leader is interviewed (‘“‘Newsmakers’’ and ‘Public
Hearing” on WCBS, “Sunday” and “Here and
Now’’ on WNBC and “Eyewitness News Con-
ference’ on WABC). Regardless of the news value
of the interview, a taped “‘highlight’’ will inevitably
appear on the station’s Sunday news that night. To
supplement its own tape, each station also sends a
camera crew to the studios of the other stations in
order to get a quick interview with their politician-
guest as he or she is entering or leaving. Other
political coverage also resembles the features
between which it is squeezed.

Last fall, Channel 2’s Arnold Diaz was sent
to cover the first Governor’s Cup Yacht Race in
New York Harbor. With the then-governor
himself on hand, it was an opportunity to ask him
some serious questions. But reporter Diaz asked
only one, about inflation. The remainder of the
report—in its entirety—ran as follows:

The beginning of the Governor’s Cup race, and
appropriately the governor himself signals the
start. While Malcolm Wilson watches the 75 boats
maneuver for position, he’s also thinking about
the race he’s in for governor. Thinking about it,
but seemingly not too worried. Some of his fellow
Republicans in New York are now accusing
Wilson of sitting idle in the water. They’re en-
couraging him to let his sails out and start to
aggressively campaign. But Wilson continues on
the course he has already established. Obviously,
he feels he’s on smooth water with experience to
fill his sail . . . But while Wilson says [Hugh] Carey
is a novice in sailing the state’s political waters,
some observers think the Congressman has caught
the wind just right, and is riding the tide of
popularity. But Wilson says the people have been
sending a Republican to Albany for many years,
and he’s confident the tide will not turn this year.

A. its worst, weekend news simply indulges
in the promotion game. On Oct. 13, Channel 7’s
Dan Lovett, whose beat is usually sports, did a five
minute report, live from Madison Square Garden,
on preparations for a concert to be given there that
night by Frank Sinatra—and televised by ABC.
When not plugging the program, Lovett was asking
comedian Pat Henry tough, probing questions like,
“Pat, you’ve worked so many years with the man
and, uh, he’s a great guy.” Answer: “Frank is an
unbelievable man, everything he does is per-
fection ....” In all, the telecast of the concert was
pitched four times, twice by Lovett, again after the
report by co-anchorwoman Melba Tolliver, and
once more a little later by weatherman Tex An-
toine. About a month earlier, Channel 4 did a
similar, if somewhat more subdued, report on Bob
Hope and Jackie Gleason when they were in town
to do a show subsequently televised by NBC.
Both Channels 2 and 4 rely heavily on
expanded sports segments to fill weekend time. On
fall Sunday nights, ““NewsCenter 4’’ resembles a
post-game show, with Dick Schaap narrating the
highlights not only of Jets and Giants games, but
three or four others as well. And Channel 2 added
something extra for three weeks last fall. On
Saturday, Sept. 28, WCBS offered not one but two

[MORE] 21

sportscasters seated next to anchorman Vic Miles.
Next to John Kenelley, the weekend sports
reporter, was ex- Yankee Jim Bouton, who normally
covers sports only on weeknights. Clearly,
something had happened that day in the “world of
sports.” And so it had. Dickinson High School in
Jersey City, N.J., had played its first football game
of the season.

It seems that going into last year, Dickinson
had lost 41 consecutive football games. “To change
their luck this year, they got a new athletic director,
coach, and they changed their school
colors.’ reported Bouton, who took us to the pre-
game pep rally and summarized first-half
highlights. Then, to the locker room to hear the
pep talk from Coach Tom Bullwhip:

“IT told you, you have to look the man right
in the face, and make up your mind, that you're the
better ballplayer, and BLOW THEM OFF THE
FIELD!”

Although Dickinson lost 22 to 0, Bouton
was not disheartened. Channel 2 went back the
next week. The team lost again, but by now
someone had decided that the story was important
enough to run on Monday night as well as over the
weekend. Dickinson played its third game on
Saturday, Oct. 12.

“This afternoon at Roosevelt Stadium, I
saw the greatest football game I’ve ever seen in my
life,"’ Bouton reported that night. “Dickinson High
School played their hearts out . . . Their opponents

a new

were fear, anxiety, pressure and doubt, and a
determined Emerson High School.”’ Dickinson won
the game with a dramatic, last-second touchdown.
Declared Bouton: “The jinx is over, the witch is
dead, Dickinson wins . . . and the kids who played
and the rest of us at that stadium will remember
this game for the rest of their lives. Winning the
World Series was a mild thrill compared to what I
felt today.”

Wovens news programs also display a
blind willingness to accept every declaration of
social scientists as gospel. The “melting pot’’
theory of American life went unquestioned by most
media for many years. Now that “‘pluralism” is in
vogue, local television news departments have
reversed themselves without batting an eye. On
Sept. 29, Channel 7 sent Paul Udell to Newark to
report on an exhibition in which children were
encouraged to use art as a means of expressing
their ethnic identity. A sponsor of the exhibit told
Udell that “we must get away from the old myth
that has plagued this country for generations, of
the melting pot idea.”’ Although the report ran for
two minutes and fifteen seconds, Udell never asked
why. Although such failures are not unique to
weekend news, it is the weekend programs that
offer ample time to ask a question like ‘‘why?”’

Indeed, the potential of local weekend
television news programs, freed as they are from

covering large numbers of breaking stories, is
tremendous. They could thoughtfully examine New
York City’s neighborhoods and their problems,
(though hopefully minus the “neighborhood is
always right, City Hall is always wrong” attitude
which often characterizes those few reports which
do appear), perhaps spotting potential conflicts
before they reach the crisis stage and showing one
community how another is dealing with similar
problems. They could provide detailed coverage of
events and issues outside of New York City. (Not
that such coverage is totally lacking now. Every
Sunday, on Channel 7, the ‘‘Eyewitness Gourmet”’
visits a suburban restaurant.) They could focus
attention on the ‘‘lesser’’ election campaigns in the
New York area. To judge by television's coverage of
the last local elections, one would think that the
only contested offices were governor, liéutenant
governor, attorney general, senator, and
Manhattan district attorney. (Plus one City Council
candidate, who campaigned with a live cow.)
Weekend news producers cite a lack of staff
when explaining why they do few serious and
complex stories. “The entire staff [for weekend
news] amounts to one desk person, a three-man
crew, producer, writer, anchorman, and two P.A.s
{production assistants],"" says Channel S’s Ludel.
Although many weekend programs pull ratings
equal to or higher than their weeknight coun-
terparts, no New York television station has more
(continued on page 26)

A Challenge to Students. . .

Can you top

“The Great Albany Sex Scandal’?

“The Great Albany Sex Scandal” by Richard Wexler appeared in the July 1974 issue of [MORE]. A

detailed, careful scrutiny of four state legislators, a young nurse and journalistic overkill in New York’s
capital city, the story won [MORE]’s first competition for students in media criticism.
We’re renewing the challenge to students this year to encourage more examination of the press and its
treatment of local news. The contest ground rules are outlined below.
All college and university students, either individually or in groups, are invited to enter the
competition. The best article, selected by [MORE]’s editors, will appear in [MORE]. The author(s) will
receive our regular story fee and the Student Award for Media Criticism, to be presented at the 4th A.J.

The Subject:

1. To show how the media

2. TO report that story with the

Liebling Counter-Convention next May in New York.

in your area are
inadequately reporting a /oca/ story of major significance.

ignoring or

thoroughness'= and

toughmindedness that the media ought to be applying.

3. Todraw the broad implications from the specific story.
4. The subject is up to you, but could be politics, business,
charity,

sports. religion, institutionalized
communications. government, etc.

The Story:

1. Acareful, analytical scrutiny of the media’s performance.

publishing.

2. A well-documented exposé of the story itself.
No maximum or minimum length, but shoot for 4,000 to 6,000

vords

22 [MORE]

Strive for aetailed reporting and crisp, tight writing.

Deadline: April 15, 1975 (no exceptions). Please mail entries to
{MORE}. 750 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10017.

’ Eligibility: All full-time college and university students may enter
the competition, either singly or in groups.

Student Award For Media Criticism

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Mr.
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(Please print plainly

City &
State

Zip

SMAN & ATIVE

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They All Look
Alike Anyway

Gen. George Brown paid a visit to
The New York Times \ast month, the
guest of honor at one of Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger’s regular publisher's
luncheons. He came in his capacity
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and in response to an invitation
that was sent before the now well-
reported flap over his remark that
Jews control the banks and
newspapers in the U.S.

Once the dozen or so diners were
assembled around the table in the
publisher's dining room on_ the
eleventh floor, managing editor
A.M. Rosenthal broke the ice. He
asked the general what had made
him make the statement. At first
Brown said he had not come to talk
about the incident. But when
Rosenthal politely persisted, Brown
apologized for the comment.

Not long thereafter, the talk
turned to the military and political
situation in the Middle East. And at
one point, speaking of the Arabs,
Brown allowed that “we can’t keep
them barefoot and _ ignorant
forever.”’ —R.P.

Fun and Games
Vince Lombardi would never have
agreed, but CBS Sports has decided
that football should be fun. “We try
not to take the game too seriously,”
says Clarence Cross, director of
sports. “After all, it’s only a game.”

Cross and his boss, vice president
of sports Bob Wussler, were sum-
moned to New York headquarters
last summer from WBBM, CBS's
Chicago outlet, to take over the
network sports operation. With
football first on the schedule, they
flew Jane Chastain up from Miami to
handle the feature-y “women’s”
angle. They also spiced up the
pregame shows, trying to create a
more relaxed atmosphere. CBS
announcers and colormen—who
include Pat Summerall, Lindsey
Nelson, Bart Starr and Dick
Stockton—were instructed’ to
provide all the necessary information
“in a funny or light presentation,”
says Cross.

The effort to make sportscasters
seem like just one of the guys doesn’t
mean that ‘‘a heck of a good play”
will now become *‘‘a helluva good
play.’’ Still, commentator Don
Criqui says that no one tells him
what he can or cannot say during a
game. ‘“The new head of sports just
said we should have more fun on the
air,” says Criqui. ‘“‘He doesn’t think
it should be like Nuremberg.”

Before Cross arrived, CBS's
Sunday football broadcasts had been

®

24 [MORE] -

running third in the ratings, against
NBC's Sunday games and ABC's
top-rated Monday night football
coverage. Did the change in format
have anything to do with these
standings? *‘Of course,” says Cross.
But as the season end nears, he says,
CBS seems to be gaining, and “‘if
we're down at all this year, it will
only be by about 2 per cent.”’ In that
event, score another victory for

happy talk. —AMANDA HARRIS

’

Star Trek

“I figured,’ wrote Nora Ephron in
her first New York magazine column
in October 1973, ‘‘why not leave
Esquire magazine.

“| figured there are worse things
in this world than letting Clay Felker
make you a star.”

Evidently there are some better
things, too, because this fall Ephron,
her star intact, decided not to renew
her contract with New York.
Beginning in March, she will return
to Esquire to write a media column.
While at New York, Ephron wrote a

Nora Ephron

column called *‘Women,”’ and
covered the Watergate hearings and
the Arab-Israeli war for publisher-
editor Felker, who hired her after
Sally Quinn spurned his first and
more famous offer of celebrity.

“I decided that there’s room in my
life for either professional crises or
personal crises,’ says Ephron, ‘‘and
since I’m single I have no room for
professional crises.” As for what
professional crises she was avoiding
by the move, she would only say, “I
did better work at Esquire. I was
more comfortable there.” —C.C.

Blacks at Times

The Newspaper Guild of New York
has filed against The New York
Times, charging the newspaper with
practicing racial discrimination in
recruitment, hiring, wages and

VARIETY

PRUE

White Man

Marlon Brando came to town
Nov. 26 to attend a fundraising
dinner for the American In-
dian Development Association
in the grand ballroom of the
Waldorf-Astoria. At a press
conference before the event,
Brando criticized the media for
perpetuating Indian stereotypes
and ethnic slurs, and for failing
to report the Indians’ myriad
problems.

It’s obvious that Brando just
doesn’t know, or appreciate,
how hard the media try. Later
that night on WABC-TV’s 11
P.M. “Eyewitness News” show,
co-anchorman Bill Beutel
offered evidence of the

Back to you, Roger.

Speak With...

WABC-TV's Bill Beutel

station's commitment to covering Indian conditions. Said Beutel:
‘Brando said we should cover Indian affairs better than we do. But on
the other hand, they wouldn't let us take our cameras into the fund-
raising dinner to do precisely that.”

Culver Pictures

—C.C.

promoticn. The suit, filed on behalf
of the Times’s black caucus, includes
charges that:

eOf approximately 434 employees
classified in 1973 as “officials and
managers,” all but 13 are white.
eOf all the employees classified as
professionals—including _ reporters,
photographers, librarians, artists
and accountants—approximately 95
per cent are white.

eThe only classification for which
the Times actively recruits and hires
significant numbers of minorities is
that of ‘service workers,” including
porters and maintenance and
restaurant employees.

eAll of the top-salaried positions in
at least 19 departments are held by
whites.

A Times spokesman denies the
allegations in the complaint,
specifically ‘“‘the charge that any
pattern of practices of
discrimination exist at the
newspaper,” and points to = an
affirmative action plan. The Times
will present its response in Federal
court the end of January.

The events preceding the suit
follow a pattern similar to that of the
Times women’s caucus, which filed a
sexual discrimination suit against
the paper in November. While the
caucus was meeting with
management over the last three
years, management created and
presented an affirmative action
program listing goals _ for
employment of women = and
minorities over a five-year period.

The caucus, however, was
dissatisfied with the plan. An
attorney for The Newspaper Guild,

is)

Che New York Cimes

Jonathan’ Lubell, of Cohn,
Glickstein, Lurie, Ostrin & Lubell,
says the plan provided no methods
for enforcing the affirmative action
goals, and no input for the caucus
and guild as to its implementation.
Also, Lubell says, since the plan
lumps women together’ with
minorities, it is mostly white women
who get some redress. After inaction
on a complaint filed last year with
the Federal Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, the guild
went to court on Oct. 10.

At that time, no article about the
suit appeared in the Times. Donald
Barker, a Times advertising
salesman and one of the co-plaintiffs
in the suit, is “‘distressed” that the
Times covered the filing of the
women’s suit, but not the blacks’. “I
have made an inquiry to the Times
regarding this inconsistency,” he
says, “‘and I expect a definite
answer.”

The guild says it mailed press
releases about the suit, but when
assistant managing editor Peter
Millones asked an editor on the
metropolitan desk why there had
been no mention of the suit, he says
he was told that the desk had never
received it. The Times receives
hundreds of similar releases each
day, says Millones, who indicated
that the paper will probably cover
the next step in this particular
proceeding. —C.C.

Reviewing The

Reviewer
For its Dec. 8 issue, The New York
Times Book Review assigned

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Richard Reeves, contributing editor
of New York magazine, to review
Eugene Meyer, a biography of the
Washington Post's founder. At one
point in his review, Reeves, who was
the Times's chief political
correspondent from 1966 to 1971,
made a comment drawn from his
experiences working on a newspaper
owned by a very wealthy family:
... Better the Meyers and Grahams
in Washington and the Ochs and
Sulzbergers in New York than the
faceless managers and profitmakers
of corporate America. Anyone who
loves the New York Times and has
some sense of its internal workings
knows that any potential threat to its
editorial greatness comes not from
the wealth of the family that owns it

but from the corporate mentality of
its appointed managers.

Book Review editor John Leonard
called Reeves and said that Sunday
editor Max Frankel had instructed
him to ask Reeves to delete the
sentence beginning, “Anyone who
loves....”" Leonard recalls that
Reeves was not very surprised: ‘‘He
knew without being told which
sentence I meant.’’ Reeves agreed to
cut. “I thought the review made the
point without that sentence,” he
says. *‘[Frankel] felt the sentence was
gratuitous and that it slandered
people who were anonymous,’’says
Leonard. Frankel himself declined to
discuss his reasons for striking the
sentence, because ‘‘that’s between
me and Leonard.”

—ANN MARIE CUNNINGHAM

Know Your
Legislator

On Nov. 4, the day before the fall
elections, John Toscano wrote in the
Daily News’s “Of Kings and
Queens’’ column: “In Queens,
Assemblywoman Rosemary Gunning
has been belted throughout her
campaign. . .with the charge that
she’s pro-landlord on the issue of
rent legislation. However, last week
the New York State Tenants
Legislative Coalition issued its rating
of state lawmakers and Mrs.
Gunning scored a respectable 38%.”’
Unfortunately for the News—not
to mention for tenants—38 per cent
is not only a poor showing (the
ratings ranged from zero to 100 per
cent), but also the lowest rating given
to a legislator from New York City.
The Tenants Coalition feels its guide
was improperly used “to support a
known anti-tenant legislator,” says
one member. Toscano, who won't
say whether he supported Gunning,
says that he “‘expected her to get a
zero from that bunch, and to me 38
per cent was respectable.”
Gunning was reelected and re-
turns to Albany this month.
—ERNEST LENDLER

SOP PET RC

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How Hard Do Successful New Yorkers Work

Ladies and Gentlemen, ~-

The President of the United States

Ye the Clown, left, and poseur
Another Bozo
Heard From

Of all the criticism recently heaped
on President Ford’s shoulders, surely
the most graphic was the clown’s
head that appeared on the Oct. 25
cover of New York magazine. In the
accompanying story by Richard

by several
correspondents as ‘‘Bozo’’ or “Bozo

Reeves, the President is referred to
White House

the Clown.”’ Okay, the White House
press corps is entitled to its opinion.

But what does the real Bozo have to |

say about this?

We found Larry Harmon, the
original Bozo the Clown, at the Los
Angeles office of Larry Harmon

Pictures, which syndicates the Bozo
TV show in various U.S. cities and
abroad. Harmon said it was
inaccurate to compare Ford's alleged
ineptitude on the campaign trail
with Bozo’s pranks because ‘Bozo
has always brought happiness and
mirth to the world and has never said
or done the wrong thing at the wrong
time.” Over the past 26 years,
Harmon said, Bozo has done much
good work all over the country,
including in Gerald Ford’s home
state of Michigan. Indeed, Ford has
repeatedly sent letters of thanks to
Bozo, and Harmon’s company even
has a picture of Ford and Bozo
together which the President sent in
appreciation for the firm’s charitable
works. What’s more, the 76
worldwide Bozos have helped raise
money for CARE, UNICEF, and
Headstart. “‘All the good we’ve done
in the world should be recognized
and we should not be used in this
manner,’ said Harmon.
Harmon suggested calling the
Florida Bozo for further comment.
—PATRICIA MULLAN

is There a Conspiracy Against the New Boy in Town?

John Shaheen, publisher of the
ever-pending New York Press, has
filed suit in federal court charging
that Dun & Bradstreet Companies,
Inc., Dun’s Review, New York
magazine, and The Village Voice are
conspiring to keep him out of the
city’s publishing business. Shaheen
is seeking damages of nearly
$850,000 in a case which focuses on
an article originating at Dun’s and
now in the hands of the New York
Magazine Corporation, which also
owns The Village Voice.

Through feedback from persons
interviewed by Dun’s reporter
Richard Karp, Shaheen concluded
in 1973 that Karp’s article would
contain false and defamatory in-
formation about him, says Shaheen’s
counsel, Francis X. Mannix.
Shaheen sued Dun's to let him see
the article, invoking the federal Fair
Credit Reporting Act of 1971, which
allows the subject of an investigative
consumer report to view the report
and dispute alleged inaccuracies.
Shaheen contended that the Dun’s
article constituted such a report,
which is not limited to one’s credit
standing, but includes character,
reputation, and personal habits.
Mannix notes that both Dun’s (a
division of Dun-Donnelly Publishing
Corp.) and Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.,
the credit firm, are affiliates of the
same firm, Dun & Bradstreet
Companies, Inc. As such, he says,
“undoubtedly, whether lawfully or
unlawfully,’ its employees could

VARIETY

John M. Shaheen

have access to each other’s files.

Shaheen’s complaint was
dismissed by a Chicago judge.
However, at the time, Mannix says,
Shaheen was assured that Dun’s
would inform him before it planned
to run the story.

But when Dun’s decided not to use
the material, Karp started to peddle
it elsewhere, and by last fall it was on
the desk of New York editor and
publisher Clay Felker. Felker
brought the story to the attention of
Voice editors after Mary Perot
Nichols’s Oct. 3 Voice column
appeared, attributing anti-Semitic
remarks to Shaheen.

When Shaheen and his associates
learned that New York had the Karp
article, they recalled rumors they'd
heard that Felker might buy the New

York Post, or make the Voice a
daily. With the Press now set to
debut in mid-1975 as an afternoon
daily, ‘‘We said, ‘aha, we know why
New York magazine and the Village
Voice are attacking him so
thoroughly,’ ’’ says Mannix. Shaheen
now demands to see the “report,”
and alleges restraint of trade in
violation of the anti-trust laws.
The current complaint says that
Dun’s and its parent company D&B
are the proper owners of the
“report” and must prevent its
dissemination elsewhere. But in a
letter to Mannix, D&B vice president
and general counsel Charles Raikes
contended that ‘‘no reputable
publication would deny a reporter
the right to publish elsewhere.”’
Karp, meanwhile, was wooed away
from Dun’'s last fall by Forbes
magazine. After only a few days at
Forbes, Karp was assigned to fly to
Texas on a story. Since he doesn’t
like to fly, Karp declined—and was
fired. Now at Barron’s, Karp had
“no comment, my dear” about the
case. D&B’s Raikes says the com-
plaint is ““completely without merit.”’
Voice editor Ross Wetzston finds
Karp’s story “‘a damn good piece of
muckraking journalism” and hopes
to publish it soon. The story has been
cleared for libel by Voice attorneys
and scrutinized by the Voice’s free-
lance fact checkers. The judge in the
case has yet to decide whether
Shaheen may view the “report” prior
to publication. —C.C.

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New York Post

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[MORE] 25

(continued from page 21)

than two camera crews at work on Saturdays and
Sundays, and none has a full-time crew assigned to
do stories for the weekend programs during the
entire week.

Why is there such a disparity in the
allocation of resources? WNBC’s Ken Alvord cites
two possible reasons. First, the amount of time to
fill is far greater on weekdays at Channel 4, (a two-
hour early evening program, a half-hour at 11, plus
two five-minute inserts into the ‘“Today’’ show).
But Channel 4 is unusual. Most stations have only
one-half hour less news time on weekends than on
weekdays. A more likely reason is what Alvord
terms “industry psychology.” ‘The frontispiece,
the thing that your news department is measured
by is your six o'clock weeknight news.”’ he says,
“Therefore, that is where the bulk of your
effort is concentrated.”

Serious reporting for the weekend programs
can rarely be done on the weekend itself, both
because of the small staff and because government
agencies, libraries, etc. are all closed. But if each
weekend news producer had just one reporter,
camera crew and researcher available full-time
during the entire week (and if the producers
themselves did not have to double as assignment
editors or writers on weekdays), it would be enough
to make major changes.

There’s more to be said, of course, but I
don't have the time right now. I have to fence my
cactus, shoe my horse, and feed the watchbear.@

(continued from page 19)

an organizer at one major publisher who insisted
that not even his house be named. *“*What it comes
down to is fear. She’s afraid that somehow the
company will find out and she'll lose her job. She
says she’s worked too hard for too many years to
risk it all now. She'll vote for the union in a secret
election, but she’s afraid to put her name down to
make an election possible.” She is not unique.
Union designation cards are coming in more slowly
now; meetings are smaller and, at a few houses,
have ended altogether. The strike at Macmillan is
far from shutting down the company and appears
to be slowly losing support.

Despite these setbacks, however, organizing
activity is continuing. The explanation is not that
publishing workers are a new sort of people, but
that publishing houses have changed. With one or
two lingering exceptions, they are no longer the
quiet, genteel, faintly musty, mahogany-panelled
places of myth. For the most part they have been
absorbed by conglomerates, huge corporations run
by men who approach the profit and loss statement
with a reverence more suitable to a convenant with
God. It is not so much that conglomerates have
stockholders, but that they have ambitions.
Conglomerates want to grow. Raymond C. Hagel
does not earn $800 a day—$200,000 a year—
because he has the most sensitive editorital eye in
New York. His primary interest is to build a great
company, not to publish books. The simple fact of
the matter is that editors, copy editors, production
editors, jacket designers, secretaries and even

stockboys often care more about books than the
“publishers” who publish them. If union
organizers are finally making progress, it is only
because the corporate managers have taken the
odd and inefficient business of putting out books,
and made it an industry. =

|continued from back page|

not in political principle, but in a kind of joyful
schizophrenia. And what is the average citizen to
make of it all? If government is unworthy of his
confidence, why should he want more powerful and
more extensive government? How long will he
respect a free press which constantly nags him in so
contradictory a way?

The adversary posture may be exceedingly
pleasurable for journalists, but the sad truth of the
matter is that everyone else is beginning to suffer
from cramps. That is not infrequently the case
when one of the partners takes his pleasure
irresponsibly, without due regard to the needs of
others. Not only government but all the other
institutions and political forces in our society—
trade union leaders and university presidents as
well as corporate executives, the political left as
well as the political right—are becoming in-
creasingly frustrated at what they take to be an
irresponsible journalism. An adversary posture
toward the press is becoming more prevalent than
most journalists realize or care to admit. And,
despite the First Amendment, no free press can
long survive in such an atmosphere of distrust and
hostility. *

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[MORE] 27

is The Press Misusing
Its Growing Power?

BY IRVING KRISTOL
Phe notion that the media ordinarily and rightly
should

assume an adversary position vis a. vis

itis both very old and verv new. It was
f IWth- and earher 19th-century

some LOO

|
le for

Vas She uldered ASIC
reasserted in full vigor about

vy. Most of our vounver journalists

platitude sut at they seem

to realize 1s Matitude with

plications

1 guished

wersary idea Nas a dadistl

n
rm Its vodfather is the very fir \merican

Ppedaiv>ree
journalist of distinction, Thomas Paine. who is well

davs but little read. Tom Paine,

thought nese

like most radical republicans of his time. believed

that government was essentially a conspiracy

against the liberties of the people. and therefore the
less of it. the better. His advocacy of the republican
form «

that this form of government was the closest one
could, in practice, come to the ideal of no govern-
wanted a government that would be both

feeble and,

ment. He

above all, inexpensive—a_ constant
theme throughout his writings was the lower level
of taxation that a republican regime would be
willing or able to impose on its citizens.

his

government has been an enduring aspect of the

hostile and = suspicious view of
American mind, from Thomas Jefferson to Barry
Goldwater, from
in the course of the 19th century, it gradually

ceased to be the predominant aspect. It was simply

Thoreau to Paul Goodman. But

incompatible with too many emerging American
realities—with the reality of being a great power
having a “positive” role to play in the world, with
the reality of corporate capitalism which needed a
strong government as a countervailing power, with
the reality of the welfare state and its enhanced
responsibilities, etc. These changes in political
reality were inevitably and naturally accompanied
by changes in journalistic perspective. The press
still proclaimed itself the “watchdog” of the
people's liberties. It remained quick to expose and
criticize government—but, instances of corruption
aside, it was as likely to criticize government for
doing too little as for doing too much. It ceased for
the most part to think of itself as essentially an
adversary of government per se, but rather as the
chosen vehicle whereby public opinion influenced
governmental action.

Indeed. one whole part of the press, the
most

“respectable” and influential part, came to

regard itself as “‘the fourth branch of govern-
ment’ —1.e., aS participating in the exercise ot
political power. Such participation might be done
in a spirit of vigorous independence, and could lead

' ntliot thre,
0) COMI. ,

teacliti }
traditional

bri definition

anenes, Ou mM ft ien i Dei
{ . , A
values aut iven

ind Henry Luce Professor of Urban

i
York University.

made journalism a part of the political establish

ment and endowed it with commensurate

responsibilities. The major responsibility was to

help yovernment govern effectively and fairly,
presenting the news first of all from the point of
then
plementing it with the views of others. The New
York

newspaper, as indeed were most major newspapers

view of those who governed, and sup-

Times of yesteryear was exactly such a
throughout the country. That they were “co-opted”
into the political establishment, as the accusation
now has it, is the simple truth of the matter. That
they were a servile branch of this establishment is,
however, an absurd exaggeration. What we today
take for servility was then interpreted as—and may
still properly be seen as—an appropriate deference
to democratic institutions.

It is worth lingering over this point, because
it is the single most significant change that has
occurred in journalism in our lifetime. The change
is this: Not only do journalists no longer concede to
sovernment any prior claim to defining the news,

do not see government as having any right at
fully

esented to the public. Any concession along these

to have its point of view and fairly

lines is taken to be equivalent to permitting the

ress to be “manipulated” by government. Instead,

COMMON SENSE:

ADDRESSED TO THe

INHABITANTS

OF

AMERIC 4A,

Oo the following interefling
SUBJECTS.

I OF the Origin and of Government in general,
with concrfe Remarkson the Engltth Cont ituticn,

il. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succeffion.
Jl Thoughts on the prefent State of American Affairs.

IV. Of the prefent Ability of America, with forne mitcellaneaus
RefeRions.

Written by an E “Bis HMAN.
. hy Ahomas Janey
~

Man knows wo Mafler fava creating Heaven,
Or thofe whom choice and common good ordain.
Trowson.

PHLLADELPHIA, Prined

Most journalists today are not radicals @ la Tom Paine.
They are ‘liberals’ who believe in large and powerful
government. —

journalists today insist that their point of view is
what defines “the news"’—what is to be reported or
not reported, or in how much detail or in what
context. There is no more perfect illustration of this
mind than the fact that no
newspaper today feels obliged to publish a com-

state ol major
munication from a government official in which he
takes issue with a news story, and in which he tries
to explain what he “really” said or what he is
“really” up to. They may or may not publish such a
communication, as they see fit. Fifty years ago, they
vould have taken it for granted that they had no
hoice in the matter.
This new posture is often presented as a
overdue exercise in

“professional respon-

bility It is also. of course. an exercise ol

professional power—and while the power is

evident, the specific nature of the responsibility is

And Sold by R. BELL, in Third-Strect, 1776. | :

“Adversary journalism
today is rooted, not in
principle, but in a kind
of joyful schizophrenia...
The adversary posture
may be exceedingly
pleasurable for
journalists, but every-
one else is beginning
to suffer from
cramps.’’
not. The most that is offered by way of a rationale
is that, in conducting itself in this way, the press is
playing its proper and “natural” adversary role vis
a vis vovernment.

Now,

of hostility and tension in the relations between any

it is true that there is always a degree

vovernment and all journalism. Government will
always believe that the truth as it sees it vs the truth.
There is nothing sinister about this attitude. The
men and women in government are not more
corrupt or more dishonest than men and women in
any other area of life, including journalism. They
are. most of them, trying to do a difficult job—the
job of governing Americans—as best they can, as
conscientiously as they can. They would like the
public to appreciate their problems, and to un-
derstand why they are doing whatever it is they are
doing. Inevitably they tend to see themselves in the
best of possible lights and to put the nicest gloss
upon their behavior—we all do that. Inevitably,
too, they are resentful when the press suggests that
there are other lights and other possible glosses.
All this, it must be said, is normal enough.
What is not normal is the tremendous gap of
credibility and distrust which, in recent years, has
opened between public officials and the press. And
[ am talking about a// public officials, the local
parks commissioner as well as the President, the
local housing commissioner as well as the governor
or mayor. From the very bottom to the very top of
public life today one hears public officials lament,
in private conversation, that they find it impossible
to get the activities of their agencies or offices fairly
and adequately reported in the press. And this is
not normal at all. In fact, it is pathological. How on
earth is a democracy to govern itself if officialdom
finds itself perpetually
municating with the public.

frustrated in com-

To this question journalists are likely to
reply that they will do the communicating, from an
adversary posture, and that itis no part of their job
to serve as “‘flacks”’ for officialdom. The trouble
with this reassertion of the adversary tradition is
that it has cast off the principles which supported
and legitimated it. Most journalists today are not
radical republicans a la Tom Paine. They are
and powerful
government. They United States
Government must help feed the world, defend and
promote throughout the
mediate conflicts among the peoples of the world,

large
believe the

“liberals” who believe in

civil liberties world,

redistribute income in favor of the poor and the
unlucky. regulate the activities of the large cor-
porations, “‘plan” cities and neighborhoods,
etc.—all of which requires an energetic government
with a vast. self-confident bureaucracy.

In brief. journalists today are over-
whelmingly in favor of ever greater concentration
State and

of power in) vovernment—Federal,

vile, in their daily adversary proceedings

hey create an ever greater distrust and suspicion of
vovernment. Adversary journalism today is rooted,

(continued on page 26)